The Wicked Day

1

SNOW FELL THICKLY SOON after Christmas, and the ways were blocked. It was almost a month before the regular service of royal couriers could be resumed. Not that it mattered; there was little of any moment to report. In the depths of winter men — even the most dedicated warriors — stayed at home hugging the fire and looking to their houses and the needs of their families. Saxons and Celts alike kept close to their hearthstones, and if they sat whetting their weapons by the light of the winter fires, all knew that there would be no need of them until the coming of spring.

For the Orkney boys life at Caerleon, though restricted by the weather, was still lively and full enough to banish thoughts of their island home, which in any case had been, in midwinter, a place of doubtful comfort. The exercise grounds by the fortress were cleared, and work went on almost daily, in spite of snow and ice. Already a difference could be seen. Lot's four sons — the twins especially — were still wild to the point of recklessness, but as their skills improved, so also did their sense of discipline, which brought with it a certain pride. The quartet still tended to divide naturally into two pairs, the twins on the one hand and Gawain with young Gareth on the other, but there were fewer quarrels. The main difference could be discerned in their bearing towards Mordred.

Arthur had duly spoken with Gawain, a long interview which must have held, with the truth about Mordred's birth, some weighty kind of warning. Gawain's attitude to his half-brother had perceptibly altered. It was a mixture of reserve and relief. There was relief in the knowledge that his own status as Lot's eldest son would never be challenged, and that his title to the Orkney kingdom was to be upheld by the High King himself. Behind this there could be seen something of his former reserve, perhaps a resentment that Mordred's status as bastard of the High King put him higher than Gawain; but with this went caution, bred of the knowledge of what the future might hold. It was known that Queen Guinevere was barren; hence there was, Gawain knew, every possibility that Mordred might some day be presented as Arthur's heir. Arthur himself had been begotten out of wedlock and acknowledged only when grown; Mordred's turn might come. The High King was, indeed, rumoured to have other bastards — two, at least, were spoken of — but they were not at court, or seen to have his favour as Mordred had. And Queen Guinevere herself liked the boy and kept him near her. So Gawain, the only one of Lot's sons who knew the truth, bided his time, and edged his way back towards the guarded friendship that he and the older boy had originally shared.

Mordred noticed the change, recognized and understood its motives, and accepted the other boy's overtures without surprise. What did surprise him, though, was the change in the attitude of the twins. They knew nothing of Mordred's parentage, believing only that Arthur had accepted him as King Lot's bastard, and, so to speak, an outrider of the Orkney family. But the killing of Gabran had impressed them both. Agravain because a killing — any killing — was to his mind proof of what he called "manhood." Gaheris because for him it was that, and more; it was a fully justified act that avenged all of them. Though outwardly as indifferent as his twin to his mother's rare moments of fondness, Gaheris had nursed through his childhood a sore and jealous heart. Now Mordred had killed his mother's lover, and for that he was prepared to accord him homage as well as admiration. As for Gareth, the act of violence had impressed even him with respect. During the last months in Orkney Gabran had grown too self-assured, and with it arrogant, so that even the gentle youngest son had bitterly resented him. Mordred, in avenging the woman he had called mother, had in a way acted for them all. So all five of the Orkney boys settled down to work together, and in the comradeship of the training fields and the knights' hall, some kind of seedling loyalty to the High King began to grow.

News got through from Camelot with the February thaw. The boys were given tidings of their mother, who was still in Amesbury. She was to be sent north to the convent at Caer Eidyn soon after the court moved to Camelot, and her sons would be allowed to see her before she went. They accepted this almost with indifference. Perhaps Gaheris, ironically, was the only one of them who still missed his mother; Gaheris, the one she had ignored. He dreamed about her still, fantasies of rescue and return to Orkney's throne, with her grateful, and himself triumphant. But with daylight the dreams faded; even for her, he would not have abandoned the new, exciting life of the High King's court, or the hopes of preferment eventually into the ranks of the favoured Companions.

At the end of April, when the court had settled itself again for the summer in Camelot, the King sent the boys to make their farewells to their mother. This, it was rumoured, against the advice of Nimuë, who rode over from her home in Applegarth to greet the King. Merlin was no longer with the court: since his last illness he had lived in seclusion, and when the King removed from Caerleon the old enchanter retired to his hilltop home in Wales, leaving Nimuë to take his place as Arthur's adviser. But this time her advice was overruled, and the boys were duly sent up to Amesbury, with a sufficient escort led by Cei himself, with Lamorak, one of the knights.

They lodged on the way at Sarum, where the headman gave them shelter, making much of the High King's nephews, and rode next morning for Amesbury, which lies at the edge of the Great Plain.

It was a bright morning, and Lot's sons were in high spirits. They had good horses, were royally equipped, and looked forward almost without reservation to seeing Morgause again and showing off their new-found splendour before her. Any fears they might have had for her had long since been laid to rest. They had Arthur's word for it that she was not to be put to death, and though she was a prisoner, the kind of confinement that a convent would offer was not (so thought her sons in their youthful ignorance) so very different from the life she had led at home, where she had lived secluded for the most part among the women of her own household. Great ladies, indeed, they assured each other, often sought the life freely for themselves; it allowed no power of decision or rule, of course, but to the eager arrogance of youth this seemed hardly to be the woman's part. Morgause had acted as queen for her dead husband and her young son and heir, but such power could have been temporary only, and now (Gawain said it openly) was no longer necessary. There could be no more lovers, either; and this, to Gawain and Gaheris, the only ones who had really noticed or cared, was much to the good. Long might the convent keep her mewed up; in comfort, naturally, but prevented from interfering in their new lives, or bringing shame on them through lovers little older than themselves.

So they rode gaily. Gawain was already years away from her in spirit, and Gareth was concerned only with the adventure of the moment. Agravain thought about little but the horse he was riding, and the new tunic and weapons he sported ("really fit for a prince, at last!") and about all he would have to tell Morgause of his prowess at arms. Gaheris looked forward with a kind of guilty pleasure to the meeting; this time, surely, after so long an absence, she must show her delight in her sons, must give and receive caresses and loving words; and she would be alone, with no wary lover beside her chair, watching them, whispering against them.

Mordred alone rode in silence, once again apart, outside the pack. He noticed, with a stir of satisfaction, the attention, which was almost deference, paid him by Lamorak, and the careful eye that Cei kept on him. Rumour had run ahead of truth at court, and neither King nor Queen had made any attempt to scotch it. It was allowed to be seen that, of the five, Mordred was the one who mattered most. He was also the only one of the boys who felt some sort of dread of the coming interview. He did not know how much Morgause had been told, but surely she must know about her lover's death. And that death was on his hands.

So they came towards Amesbury on a fine sunny morning, with the dew splashing in glittering showers from their horses' hoofs, and met Morgause and her escort out riding in the woods.

It was a ride for exercise, not for pleasure. This much was immediately apparent. Though the queen was richly dressed, in her favourite amber cloth with a short furred mantle against the cool spring breezes, her mount was an indifferent-seeming mare, and to either side of her rode men in the uniform of Arthur's troops. From the hand of the man on her right a leading rein ran looping to the ring of the mare's bridle. A woman, plainly cloaked and hooded, rode a few paces in the rear, flanked in her turn by another pair of troopers.

It was Gareth who first recognized his mother in the little group of distant riders. He called out, stretching high in the saddle and waving. Then Gaheris spurred past him at a gallop, and the others, like a charge of cavalry, went racing across the space of wooded ground, with laughter and hunting calls and a clamour of welcome. Morgause received the rush of young horsemen with smiling pleasure. To Gaheris, who pressed first to the mare's side, she gave a hand, and leaned a cheek to his eager kiss. Her other hand she reached towards Cei, who dutifully raised it to his lips, then, relinquishing it to Gawain, reined back to let the boys crowd in.

Morgause leaned forward, both arms reaching for her sons, her face glowing.

"See, they lead my horse, so I may ride without hands! I was told I might hope to see you soon, but we did not look for you yet! You must have longed for me, as I for you.… Gawain, Agravain, Gareth, my darling, come, kiss your mother, who has hungered all these long winter months for a sight of you.… There, there, now, that's enough.… Let me go, Gaheris, let me look at you all. Oh, my darling boys, it has been so long, so long.…"

The turn towards pathos went unnoticed. Still too excited, too full of their new importance, the young horsemen caracoled around her. The scene took on the liveliness of a pleasure party.

"See, Mother, this is a stallion from the High King's own stable!"

"Look, lady, at this sword! And I've used it, too! The master-at-arms says that I promise as well as any man of my age."

"You are well, lady queen? They treat you well?" This was Gaheris.

"I am to be one of the Companions," Gawain put in, gruffly proud, "and if there is fighting in the coming summer, he has promised I shall be there."

"Will you be in Camelot for Pentecost?" asked Gareth.

Mordred had not spurred forward with the rest. She did not seem to notice. She had not even glanced his way, where he rode between Cei and Lamorak as the party turned back towards Amesbury. She laughed with her sons, and talked gaily, and let them shout and boast, and asked questions about Camelot and Caerleon, listening to their eager praises with flattering attention. From time to time she threw a gentle look, or a charming word, to Lamorak, the knight riding nearest, or even to the men of the escort. She was concerned, one might have guessed, with the report that would eventually go back to Arthur. Her looks were mild and sweet, her words innocent of anything but a mother's interest in her sons' progress, and a mother's gratitude for what the High King and his deputies were doing for them. When she spoke of Arthur — this was to Cei, across the heads of Gareth and Gaheris — it was with praise of his generosity towards her children ("my orphaned boys, who would otherwise be robbed of all protection") and for the King's grace, as she called it, towards herself. It was to be noticed that in a while she assumed a further, and complete, act of grace. She turned her lovely eyes full on Cei and asked, with sweet humility:

"And did the King my brother send you to take me back to court?"

When Cei, flushing and looking away, told her no, she said nothing, but bowed her head and let a hand steal to her eyes. Mordred, who rode to that side of her and a little in the rear, saw that she was tearless, but Gaheris pushed forward to her other side and laid a hand on her arm.

"Soon, though, lady! It will surely be soon! As soon as we get back we will petition him! By Pentecost, surely!"

She made no reply. She gave a little shiver, pulled her cloak closer, and glanced up at the sky, then, with an effort that was patent, straightened her shoulders. "Look, the day is clouding over. Let us not loiter here. Let us get back." Her smile was bright with bravery. "Today, at least, Amesbury will cease to seem a prison."

By the time the party neared the village of Amesbury, Cei, at her left hand, was visibly unbending, Lamorak stared with open admiration, and Lot's sons had forgotten that they had ever wanted to be free of her. The spell was woven again. Nimuë had been right. The links so recently forged in Caerleon were wearing thin already. The Orkney brothers would take a less than perfect loyalty back to their uncle the High King.

2

THE CONVENT GATE WAS OPEN, and the porter watching for them. He stared in surprise at the sight of the Camelot party, and shouted to a sack-clad youth — a novice — who was grubbing among lettuces in a weedy bed beside a wall. The novice went running, and by the time the party rode into the yard the abbot himself, slightly out of breath but with unimpaired dignity, appeared at the doorway of his house and stood waiting at the head of the steps to receive them.

Even here, under the abbot's eye, Morgause's spell held good. Cei, moving with stolid courtesy to help her dismount, was beaten to it by Lamorak, with Gawain and Gaheris close behind. Morgause, with a smile at her sons, slid gracefully into Lamorak's arms, and then held to him a moment, letting it be seen that the ride, and the excitement of the meeting, had taxed her frail strength. She thanked the knight prettily, then turned to the boys again. She would rest awhile in her own rooms, she told them, while Abbot Luke made them welcome, then later, when they were fed and changed and rested, she would receive them.

So, to the abbot's barely concealed irritation, Morgause, having turned her status as prisoner into that of a queen granting audience, moved off towards the women's side of the convent, supported on the arm of her waiting-woman, and followed, as if by a royal escort, by her four guards.

In the years since Arthur's crowning, and more especially since Morgause had come as his prisoner, the High King had sent gifts and money to the foundation at Amesbury, so the place was larger and better kept than when the young King had first ridden south to see his father buried in the Giants' Dance.

Where there had been fields behind the chapel, there was now a walled garden, with its orchard and fishpond, and beyond this a second courtyard had been built, so that the quarters of men and women could be separate. The abbot's house had been enlarged, and there was no longer any need for him to vacate his quarters for royal guests; a well-built wing of guest rooms faced south onto the garden. To this the travellers were escorted by the two young novices appointed to see to their comfort. The boys were shown into the guests' dorter, a long, sunny room with half-a-dozen beds, and with no convent-like austerity about it. The beds were new and good, with painted headboards, the floor was of stone, scrubbed white and covered with brightly woven rugs, and wax candles stood ready in silver sconces. Mordred, glancing around him, and out of the broad windows where the sun shone warmly on lawn and fishpond and blossoming apple trees, reflected dryly that no doubt Morgause could take all the privileges she wanted, and welcome: She must be, in a quite literal sense, the most paying of guests.

The meal was good, too. The boys were served in the small refectory attached to the guest house, and afterwards made free of the convent grounds and the town — it was little more than a village — outside the walls. Their mother, they were told, would receive them after evening chapel. Cei did not appear; he was closeted with Abbot Luke; but Lamorak stayed with the boys, and in response to their pleading took them riding out on the Great Plain, where, two miles or so from Amesbury, stood the great circle of stones called the Giants' Dance.

"Where our kinsman the great Ambrosius is buried, and our grandfather Uther Pendragon beside him," said Agravain to Mordred, with a touch of his old arrogance. Mordred said nothing, but caught Gawain's quick look, and smiled to himself. From Lamorak's sidelong glance it could be guessed that he, too, knew the truth about Arthur's eldest "nephew."

As befitted the convent's guests, they all went to the evening service. A little to Mordred's surprise, Morgause attended, too. As Lamorak and the boys approached the chapel door, the nuns went by two by two, with slow steps and downcast eyes. At the rear of the little procession walked Morgause, dressed simply in black, her face veiled. Two women attended her; one was the waiting-woman who had been riding with her, the other looked younger, with the ageless face of extreme stupidity, and the heavy pale look of ill-health. Last came the abbess, a slightly built, sweet-faced woman, with an air of gentle innocence which was perhaps not the best quality for the ruler of such a community. She had been appointed head of the women's side of the convent by the abbot, who was not the man to brook any rival in authority. Since Morgause's coming Abbot Luke had had cause to regret his choice; Mother Mary was not the woman to control her royal prisoner. On the other hand the convent, since that prisoner's coming, had flourished exceedingly, so, as long as the Queen of Orkney was safely held, Abbot Luke could see no need to interfere with the too-gentle rule of the abbess. He himself was not entirely immune to the flattering respect Morgause showed him, or to the fragile charm she exhibited in his presence, and besides, there was always the possibility that some day she would be reinstated, if not in her own kingdom, then at court, where she was, after all, the High King's half-sister.…

The younger of Morgause's women brought the queen's message soon after chapel. The four younger princes were to sup with their mother. She would send for them later. She would see Prince Mordred now.

Across the barrage of objections and questions that this provoked Mordred met Gawain's eyes. Alone of the four, he looked commiserating rather than resentful.

"Well, good luck," he said, and Mordred thanked him, smoothing his hair and settling his belt and the hanger at his hip, while the woman stood waiting by the door, staring with pale eyes out of that lard-like face and repeating, as if she could only speak by rote: "The young princes are to take supper with Madam, but now she will see Prince Mordred, alone."

Mordred, as he followed her, heard Gawain say in a low quick aside to Gaheris: "Don't be a fool, it's hardly a privilege. She never even looked at him this morning, did she? And you must know why. You can't surely have forgotten Gabran? Poor Mordred, don't envy him this!"

He followed the woman across the lawn. Blackbirds hopped about on the grass, pecking for worms, and a thrush sang somewhere among the apple trees. The sun was still warm, and the place full of the scent of apple blossom and primroses and the yellow wallflowers beside the path.

He was aware of none of it. All his being was turned inward, centered on the coming interview, wishing now that he had had the hardihood to disagree when the King had said to him: "I have refused to see her, ever again, but you are her son, and I think you owe her this, if only as a courtesy. You need never go back. But this time, this one time, you must. I have taken her kingdom from her, and her sons; let it not be said that I did so with brutality."

And in his head, over this voice of memory, two other voices persisted, of the boy Mordred, the fisherman's son, and of Mordred the prince, son of the High King Arthur, and a man grown.

Why should you fear her? She can do nothing. She is a prisoner and helpless.

That was the prince, tall and brave in his silver-trimmed tunic and new green mantle.

She is a witch, said the fisher-boy.

She is a prisoner of the High King, and he is my father. My father, said the prince.

She is my mother, and a witch.

She is no longer a queen. She has no power.

She is a witch, and she murdered my mother.

You are afraid, of her? The prince was contemptuous.

Yes.

Why? What can she do? She cannot even cast a spell. Not here. You are not alone with her now in an underground tomb.

I know. I don't know why. She is a woman alone, and a prisoner, and without help, and I am afraid.

A side door stood open under the arcade of the nuns' courtyard. The woman beckoned, and he followed her in, along a short passage which ended in another door.

His heart was hammering now, his hands damp. He clenched them at his sides, then loosed them deliberately, fighting back towards calmness.

I am Mordred. I am my own man, beholden neither to her nor to the High King. I shall listen to her, and then go. I need never see her again. Whatever she is, whatever she says, it cannot matter. I am my own man, and I do my own will.

The woman opened the door without knocking, and stood aside for him to enter.

The room was large, but chilly and sparsely furnished. The walls were of daubed wattle, roughly plastered and painted, the floor of stone, bare of any rugs or coverings. To one side, looking out on the arcade, was a window, unglazed and open to the evening breeze. Opposite this was another door. Against the long wall of the room stood a heavy table and bench of carved and polished wood. At one end of the table was the room's single chair, high-backed and ornately carved, but without cushions. A couple of wooden stools flanked it. The table was set as if for the evening meal, with platters and cups of pewter and red clay and even wood. One part of Mordred's brain — the part that stayed coolly observant in spite of moist skin and rushing heart — noted with a twist of amusement that his half-brothers looked to be in for a meal frugal even by monkish standards. Then the far door opened, and Morgause came into the room.

Once before, when for the first time the ragged fisher-boy had been brought, among the lights and colours of the palace, face to face with the queen, he had had eyes for nothing else; now in this bare and chilly room he forgot it all, and stared at her.

She was still dressed in her chapel-going black, without colour or ornament except a silver cross (a cross?) which hung on her breast. Her hair was plainly braided in two long plaits. She was no longer veiled. She moved forward to stand beside the chair, one hand on its tall back, the other holding a fold of her gown. She waited there in unmoving silence while the waiting-woman latched the door and went with her heavy, deliberate tread across the room to leave by the inner door. As it opened and shut behind her, Mordred caught a glimpse of stacked chairs and the gleam of silver hidden by a pile of coloured stuffs. Someone spoke quickly and was hushed. Then the door shut quietly and he was alone with the queen.

He stood still, waiting. She turned her head on its poised neck and let the silence hang longer. Light from the window moved in the heavy folds of her skirt, and the silver cross on her breast quivered. Suddenly, like a diver coming up into air, he saw two things clearly: the whitened knuckles of the fist that gripped the black cloth at her side, and the movement of her breast with her quickened breathing. She, too, faced this interview with something less than equanimity. She was as tense as he.

He saw more. The marks against the plaster where hangings had been hastily removed; the lighter patches on the floor where rugs had lain; scratches where chairs and lamps and tables — all the furnishings light enough for the women to handle — had been dragged out and stacked in the inner room, along with the cushions and silver and all the luxuries without which Morgause would have felt herself sadly ill-used. And this was the point. Once more, as had been her habit, Morgause had set the scene. The plain black clothes, the bare chilly chamber, the lack of attendants — the Queen of Orkney was concerned still with the report that would go back to Arthur, and with what her sons would find. They were to see her as a lonely and oppressed prisoner, kept in sad confinement.

It was enough. Mordred's fear faded. He gave a courtly bow and thereafter stood easily, waiting, apparently quite unperturbed by the silence and the scrutiny of the queen.

She let her hand fall from the chair-back, and taking up a fold of the heavy skirt on the other side, swept to the front of the chair, and sat. She smoothed the black cloth over her knees, folded her hands, white against black, lifted her head, and looked him slowly up and down from head to foot. He saw then that she was wearing the royal circlet of Lothian and Orkney. Its pearls and citrines, set in white gold, glimmered in the red gold of her hair.

When it was apparent that he was neither awed nor disconcerted, she spoke.

"Come nearer. Here, where I can see you. Hm. Yes, very fine. 'Prince Mordred,' it is now, they tell me. One of the ornaments of Camelot, and a hopeful sword at Arthur's service."

He bowed again, and said nothing. Her lips thinned.

"So he told you, did he?"

"Yes, madam."

"The truth? Did he dare?" Her voice was sharp with scorn.

"It seems like the truth. No one would invent such a tale to boast of it."

"Ah, so the young serpent can hiss. I thought you were my devoted servant, Mordred the fisher-boy?"

"I was, madam. What I owe you, I owe you. But what I owe him, I owe likewise."

"A moment's lust." She spoke contemptuously. "A boy after his first battle. An untried young pup that came running to the first woman that whistled him."

Silence. Her voice rose a fraction. "Did he tell you that?"

Mordred spoke steadily, in a voice almost devoid of expression. "He told me that I am his son, begotten by him in ignorance on his half-sister, after the battle at Luguvallium. That immediately afterwards you contrived to marry King Lot, who should have been your sister's lord, and with him went as his queen to Dunpeldyr, where I was born. That King Lot, hearing of the birth too soon after the marriage, and fearful of nurturing what he suspected to be a bastard of the High King's, tried to have me killed, and to that end drowned all the young children in Dunpeldyr, putting the blame for this upon the King. That you, madam, helped him in this, knowing that you had already sent me to safety in the islands, where Brude and Sula had been paid to care for me."

She leaned forward. Her hands moved to the chair-arms, gripping. "And did Arthur tell you that he, too, wanted you dead? Did he tell you that, Mordred?"

"He did not need to. I would have known it, anyway."

"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.

Mordred shrugged. "It would have been reasonable. The High King looked then to have other sons, by his queen. Why should he wish to keep me, a bastard out of his enemy?" His look challenged her. "You cannot deny that you are his enemy, nor that Lot was. And that is why you kept me, isn't it? I used to wonder why you paid Brude to keep me, Lot's son. And I was right to wonder. You would never have kept Lot's son by another woman. There was one called Macha, was there not? A woman whose baby son was put in my cradle, to draw Lot's sword and let your son escape?"

For a moment she made no answer. She had lost colour. Then she said, ignoring his last statement: "So, I kept you from Lot's vengeance. You know that. You admit it. What did you say a moment ago? That what you owe me, you owe me. Your life, then. Twice, Mordred, twice." She leaned forward. Her voice throbbed. "Mordred, I am your mother. Don't forget that. I bore you. For you I suffered—"

His look stopped her. She had a moment to consider that any of her four sons by Lot would have already been at her knees. But not this one. Not Arthur's son.

He was speaking, coldly. "You gave me life, yes, for a moment's lust. You said that, not I. But it was true, was it not, madam? A woman whistling up a boy to her bed. A boy she knew to be her half-brother, but who she also knew would one day be a great king. I owe you nothing for that."

She flared suddenly, shrilly, into anger. "How dare you? You, a bastard spawn, hatched in a hovel by a pair of filthy peasants, to speak to me—"

He moved. Suddenly he was as angry as she. His eyes blazed. "They say, don't they, that the sun begets spawn on the reptiles as they lie in the mud?"

Silence. Then she drew in a hissing breath. She sat back in her chair, and her hands clasped again in her lap. With his momentary loss of control, she had regained hers. She said, softly: "Do you remember going with me once into a cave?"

Again silence. He moistened his lips, but said nothing.

She nodded. "I thought you had forgotten. Then let me remind you. Let me remind you to fear me, my son Mordred. I am a witch. I shall remind you of that, and of a curse I once laid on Merlin, who also took it upon himself to berate me for that unguarded night of love. He, like you, forgot that it takes two to make a child."

He stirred. "A night of love and a birthing does not make a mother, madam. I owed Sula more, and Brude. I said I owed you nothing. It's not true. I owe you their deaths. Their hideous deaths. You killed them."

"I? What folly is this?"

"Would you deny it? I should have suspected it long ago. But now I know. Gabran confessed before he died."

That shook her. To his surprise, he realized that she had not known. The colour came to her cheeks and faded again. She was very pale. "Gabran dead?"

"Yes."

"How?"

Mordred said, with satisfaction: "I killed him."

"You? For that?"

"Why else? If it grieves you — but I see that it does not. If you had even asked for him, or looked for him, someone would have told you, you would have known. Do you not even care about his death?"

"You talk like a green fool. What use was Gabran to me here? Oh, he was a good lover, but Arthur would never have let him come to me here. Is that all he told you?"

"That is all he was asked. Why, did he do other murders for you? Was it he who served Merlin the poison?"

"That was years ago. Tell me, has the old wizard been talking to you? Is it he who has put you under his spell as Arthur's man?"

"I have not spoken with him," said Mordred. "I've barely seen him. He has gone back into Wales."

"Then did your father the High King" — the words spat — "who has been so open with you, did he tell you what Merlin promised? For you?"

He answered, dry-mouthed: "You told me. I remember it. But all that you told me then was lies. You said he was my enemy. That was a lie. All of it, lies! Neither is Merlin my enemy! All this talk of a promise—"

"Is the truth. Ask him. Or ask the King. Better still, ask yourself, Mordred, why I should have kept you alive. Yes, I see that you understand it now. I kept you alive because by so doing I shall in the end have my revenge on Merlin, and on Arthur who despised me. Listen. Merlin foresaw that you would bring doom on Arthur. From dread of it he drove me from court, and poisoned Arthur's mind against me. So since that day, my son, I have done my utmost to bring that doom nearer. Not only by bearing you, and keeping you safe from Lot's murdering sword, but with a curse renewed at the dark of every moon since the day I was banished from my father's court, to spend my young life in the far, cold corners of the realm; I, the daughter of Uther Pendragon, reared in the wealth and gaiety—"

He interrupted her. He had only heard the one thing. "I, the doom of Arthur? How?"

At the note in his voice she began to smile. "If I knew, I would hardly tell you. But I don't know. Nor did Merlin."

"Why did he not have me destroyed, if this is true?"

Her lip curled. "He had scruples. You were the son of the High King. Merlin used to say that the gods do their own work in their own way."

Another silence, then Mordred said, slowly: "But in this matter, it seems they will have to work through men's hands. Mine. And I can tell you now. Queen Morgause, that I shall bring no doom on the King!"

"How can you avoid it when not you, nor I, nor even Merlin, know how it will strike?"

"Except that it will strike through me! You think I shall wait passively for that? I shall find a way!"

She was contemptuous. "Why pretend to be so loyal? Are you telling me that you love him, all in a moment? You have neither love nor loyalty in you. Look how you have turned against me, and you were to serve me all your days."

"One cannot build on rotten rock!" he said, furiously. She was smiling now. "If I am rotten, you are my blood, Mordred. My blood."

"And his!"

"A son is his mother's stamp," she said.

"Not always! The others are yours, and their sire's, you have only to look at them. But I, no one would know me for your son!"

"But you are like me. They are not. They are bold, handsome fighters, with the minds of wild cattle. You are a witch's son, Mordred, with a smooth and subtle tongue and a serpent's tooth and a mind that works in silence. My tongue. My bite. My mind." She smiled a slow, rich smile. "They may keep me shut up till my life's end, but now my brother Arthur has taken to himself another such: a son with his mother's mind."

The cold had crept into his very bones. He said huskily: "This is not true. You cannot come at him through me. I am my own man. I will not harm him."

She leaned forward. She spoke softly, still smiling. "Mordred, listen to me. You are young, and you do not know the world. I hated Merlin, but he was never wrong. If Merlin saw it written in the stars that you would be Arthur's doom, then how can you escape it? There will come a day, the wicked day of destiny, when all will come to pass as he foretold. And I, too, have seen something, not in the heavens, but in the pool below the earth."

"What?" he asked, hoarsely.

She still spoke softly. There was colour in her face now, and her eyes shone. She looked beautiful. "I have seen a queen for you, Mordred, and a throne if you have the strength to take it. A fair queen and a high throne. And I see a snake striking at the kingdom's heel."

The words seemed to echo round the room, deep in note like a bell. Mordred spoke quickly, trying to kill the magic. "If I turned on him, then indeed I would be a snake."

"If you are," rejoined Morgause smoothly, "it is a role you share with the brightest of the angels, and the one who was closest to his lord."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, stories the nuns tell."

He said, very angrily: "You are talking nonsense to frighten me! I am not Lot or Gabran, a besotted tool to do your murders for you. You said I was like you. Very well. Now that I am warned, I shall know what to do. If I have to leave court and stay away from him, I shall do it. No power on earth can make me lift a hand to kill unless I wish it, and this death I swear to you I shall never undertake. I swear it by the Goddess herself."

No echo. The magic was gone. The shouted words fell into dead air. He stood panting, a hand clenched on his sword hilt.

"Brave words," said Morgause, very lightly, and laughed aloud.

He turned and ran from the room, slamming the door to shut off the laughter which followed him like a curse.

3

ONCE BACK IN CAMELOT THE memory of Amesbury and its imprisoned queen began to fade as the boys were plunged again into the life and excitement of the capital.

At first Gaheris complained loudly to whoever would listen about the hardships his mother was obviously suffering. Mordred, who might have enlightened him, said nothing. Nor did he mention his own interview with the queen. The younger boys probed now and then, but were met with silence, so soon stopped asking, and lost interest. Gawain, who must have guessed what the tenor of that interview might be, was perhaps unwilling to risk a snub, so showed no curiosity, and was told nothing. Arthur did ask Mordred how he had fared, then, accepting his son's "Well enough, sir, but not well enough to crave another meeting," merely nodded and turned the subject. It was observed that the King was angry, bored or impatient if his sisters were spoken of, so mention of them was avoided, and in time they were almost forgotten.

Queen Morgause was not after all sent north to join her sister Morgan. The latter, in fact, came south.

When King Urbgen, after a grim and lengthy interview with the High King, had finally put Queen Morgan aside, and given her back into Arthur's jurisdiction, she was held for some time at Caer Eidyn, but eventually won her brother's grudging permission to travel south to her own castle — one that Arthur himself had granted her in happier days — among the hills to the north of Caerleon. Once settled there, with a guard of Arthur's soldiers and such of her women as were willing to remain in captivity with her, she settled down to a small approximation of a royal court, and proceeded (so rumour said, and for once rumour was right) to hatch little plots of hatred against her brother and her husband, as busily and almost as cozily as a hen hatches her eggs.

She also besieged the King from time to time, through the royal couriers, for various favours. One repeated request was for her "dear sister" to be allowed to join her at Castell Aur. It was well known that the two royal ladies had little fondness for one another, and Arthur, when he brought himself to think about it all, suspected that Morgan's desire to join forces with Morgause was literally that: a wish to double the baneful power of such magic as she had. Here rumour spoke again, in whispers: It was being said that Queen Morgan far surpassed Morgause in power, and that none of it was used for good. So Morgan's requests were shrugged off, the High King tending, like any lesser man beset by a nagging woman, to shut his ears and turn the other way. He simply referred the matter to his chief adviser, and had the sense to let a woman deal with the women.

Nimuë's advice was clear and simple: keep them guarded, and keep them apart. So the two queens remained under guard, one in Wales, the other still in Amesbury, but — again on Nimuë's advice — not too strictly prisoned.

"Leave them their state and their titles, their fine clothing and their lovers," she said, and when the King raised his brows, "Men soon forget what has happened, and a fair woman under duress is a center for plotting and disaffection. Don't make martyrs. In a few years' time the younger men won't know or care that Morgause poisoned Merlin, or did murder here and there. They have already forgotten that she and Lot massacred the babies at Dunpeldyr. Give any evildoer a year or two of punishment, and there will be some fool willing to wave a banner and shout, "Cruelty, let them go." Let them have the things that don't matter, but keep them close, and watch them always."

So Queen Morgan held her small court at Castell Aur, and sent her frequent letters along the couriers' road to Camelot, and Queen Morgause remained in the convent at Amesbury. She was permitted to increase the state in which she lived, but even so her captivity was possibly not so easy as her sister's, involving as it did a certain degree of lip-service to the monastic rule. But Morgause had her methods. To the abbot she presented herself as one who, long shut away from the true faith in the pagan darkness of the Orkneys, was eager and willing to learn all she could about the "new religion" of the Christians. The women who served her attended the devotions of the good sisters, and spent many long hours helping with the nuns' sewing and other, more menial tasks. It might have been noted that the queen herself was content to delegate this side of her devotions, but she was civility itself to the abbess, and that elderly and innocent lady was easily deceived by the attentions of one who was half-sister to the High King himself, whatever the supposed crimes she had committed.

"Supposed crimes." Nimuë was right. As time went by, the memory of Morgause's alleged crimes grew fainter, and the impression, carefully fostered by the lady herself, of a sweet sad captive, devoted to her royal brother, reft from her beloved sons, and far from her own land, grew, spreading far beyond the convent walls. And though it was common knowledge that the High King's eldest "nephew" bore in fact a closer and somewhat scandalous relationship to the throne — well, it had happened a long time ago, in dark and troubled times, when Arthur and Morgause were very young, and even now you could see how lovely she must have been… still was.…

So the years passed, and the boys became young men, and took their places at court, and Morgause's dark deeds became a legend rather than a true memory, and Morgause herself lived on comfortably at Amesbury; rather more comfortably, in fact, than she had lived either in her chilly fortress of Dunpeldyr or the windy fastness of the Orkneys. What she lacked, and fretted for, was power, something more than she exercised over her small and private court. As time went by and it became obvious that she would never leave Amesbury, was, in fact, almost forgotten, she turned back secretly to her magic arts, convincing herself that here lay the seeds of influence and real power. One skill certainly remained with her; whether it was the plants carefully watched over in the nunnery gardens, or the spells with which they were gathered and prepared, Morgause's unguents and perfumes still worked their strong magic. Her beauty stayed with her, and with it her power over men.

She had lovers. There was the young gardener who tended the herbs and simples for her brewing, a handsome youth who had once had hopes of joining the brotherhood. It might be said that the queen did him a favour. Four months as her lover taught him that the world outside the walls held delights that at sixteen he could not bear to renounce; when she dismissed him eventually with a gift of gold, he left the convent and went to Aquae Sulis, where he met the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and thereafter prospered exceedingly. After him came others, and it was easier still when a garrison established itself on the Great Plain for exercises, and the officers tended to ride into Amesbury after work to sample what the local tavern had to offer in the way of wine and entertainment. Simpler yet when Lamorak, who had brought the boys on that long-ago visit to see their mother, was appointed garrison commander, and took it upon himself to call at the convent to ask after the health of the captive queen. She received him herself, charmingly. He called again, with gifts. Within the month they were lovers, Lamorak vowing that it had been love at first sight, and lamenting that so many wasted years had passed since their first meeting in the woodland ride.

Twice, during these years, Arthur lodged nearby, the first time with the garrison, the second time in Amesbury itself, at the house of the headman.

On the first occasion, despite Morgause's efforts, he refused to see her, contenting himself with sending to the abbess and asking formally after the prisoner's health and wellbeing, and sending deputies — Bedwyr and, ironically, Lamorak — to talk with the queen. The second time occurred some two years later. He would have preferred to sleep again at garrison head-quarters, but this might have seemed slighting to the headman's hospitality, so he lodged in the town. He gave orders that while he was in the township Morgause should not be permitted outside the convent walls, and he was obeyed. But one evening when he and half a dozen of his Companions sat at supper with the abbot and the head citizens of the township, two of Morgause's women came to the door with a tale of the captive queen's sickness, and pathetic pleas for the King's presence at her bedside. She longed only, they said, for the King's forgiveness before she died. Or if he was still set against her, she begged — and it could be seen, from the messengers' faces, with what pathos — that he should grant at least one dying wish. This was that she should see her sons once more.

Lot's sons were not in Amesbury with the King. Gaheris was with the garrison on the Plain; Gawain with the other two brothers was still in Camelot. The only one of the five in Amesbury was Mordred, who, as always now, was at his father's side.

To him Arthur, waving the women back out of earshot, said softly: "Dying? Do you suppose this is true?"

"She was out riding three days ago."

"Oh? Who says so?"

"The swineherd in the beech wood. I stopped and spoke with him. She gave him a coin once, so he watches for her. He calls her 'the pretty queen.' "

Arthur frowned, tapping the table. "There's been a cold wind all the week. I suppose she could have taken a chill. Even so—" He paused. "Well, I'll send someone tomorrow. Then, if this tale is true, I suppose I must go myself."

"And by tomorrow everything will be suitably arranged."

The King looked at him sharply. "What do you mean by that?"

Mordred said dryly: "When she sent for me before, she was alone in a cold room with no comforts. I saw them through the door, hastily stacked in the next room."

Arthur's frown deepened. "So you suspect trickery here? Still? But how? What could she do?"

Mordred shifted his shoulders as if he felt cold. "Who knows? As she reminded me, more than once, she is a witch. Keep away from her, sir. Or — let me go and see for myself if this tale of mortal sickness is true."

"You are not afraid of her witchcraft?"

"She has asked to see her sons," said Mordred, "and I am the only one here in Amesbury." He did not add that though his spirit, fed with fear by Morgause herself, shrank from her, he knew himself to be safe. He was to be — he could still hear the angry spitting voice — his father's bane. To that end she would preserve him, as she had done through those early years.

He said: "If you send now, sir, to say you will see her in the morning, that is when —if this is indeed a trick — she will make her preparations. I myself will go now, tonight."

After a little more discussion the King agreed, and, returning gratefully to his guests, sent one of his Companions to inform Queen Morgause that he would see her on the morrow.

As before, he sent Lamorak.

There was a horse tied up outside the orchard wall. Here the coping was low, and a bough of an old apple tree had forced the bricks outwards until they bulged, then broke and fell, making a place that could, with agility and the help of a horse's saddle, be climbed.

The night was moonless, but the sky glistened with stars as thick and numerous as daisies on a lawn. Mordred paused to look at the horse. Something about its white blaze and the stocking on its near fore was familiar. He looked closer, and saw on the breastband the silver boar of Orkney, and recognized Gaheris's roan. He ran a hand over its shoulder. It was damp and hot.

He stood for a moment, thinking. If the news of Morgause's illness had sped, as such news will, on the wings of gossip, to garrison headquarters, Gaheris must have ridden out immediately to visit the queen. Or he might, having been refused permission to accompany Arthur with Mordred to Amesbury, have ridden out secretly, determined to see his mother. In either case the visit was surreptitious, or he would have gone to the gate.

Mordred thought, with a touch of amusement, that in any case Morgause had not expected the visit, so would probably not yet, on this chilly night, have stripped herself of her comforts. Gaheris, whatever his loyalties, would have to share witness to his mother's health and circumstances when Mordred reported on them to Arthur.

He walked soft-footed round to the convent gate, was inspected under the lamp by the guards, showed the King's pass, and was admitted.

Within the convent walls no guards were appointed, and all was silent and deserted. Morgause now had one wing of the convent — the buildings between the orchard and the women's arcade — to herself and her attendants. Mordred walked quietly past the chapel and let himself into the arcade. Here a nun nodded beside a brazier in a little lodge. Again he showed the King's pass, was recognized and allowed through.

The arches of the arcade showed black and empty. The grass in the center of the court was grey in the starlight, its own starred daisies shut for the night, invisible. An owl flew silently across the roof tops and into the orchard boughs. The only light was the glow from the brazier in the lodge.

Mordred paused, undecided. It was late, but not yet midnight. Morgause, like most witches, was a night-time creature; surely one of her windows should be showing a light? And certainly, if the deathbed story were true, her women would be wakeful, watching by her bedside. Perhaps a lover? He had heard that she took her pleasures still. But if Gaheris was here… Gaheris?

Mordred swore aloud, sickened at himself for the thought, and then again for the knowledge that the suspicion was justified.

He tried the door under the arcade, found it unlocked, then let himself into the building and went swiftly up the well-remembered corridor. Here was the door to the queen's apartments. After a moment's hesitation, he pushed it open and went in without knocking.

This room was not as he remembered it, but as he would have seen it had Morgause not stripped it of its furnishings. Starlight fell softly through the window to light the hangings, the waxed surfaces of furniture, the gleam of gold and silver vessels. Thick rugs muffled his tread. He crossed the room to the inner door, which gave on the antechamber to the queen's bedroom. Here he paused. Her women, or surely one of them, would be awake? He bent his head and knocked softly on the panel.

There was a sound from inside the room, a hurried movement, followed by stillness, as if his knock had startled someone who did not want to be found there. Mordred hesitated again, then set his mouth and reached for the latch, but before he could lay hand on it the door was pulled open, and Gaheris stood there, sword in hand.

The antechamber was lit by a single candle. Even in its faint, diffused light it could be seen that Gaheris was as white as a ghost. When he saw Mordred he went, if possible, whiter still. His mouth slowly opened to a black 0, and he said, on a gasping breath: "You?"

"Whom did you expect?" Mordred spoke very softly, his eye going beyond Gaheris to the door of the queen's bedchamber. This was shut, and a heavy curtain was drawn across it to keep out the chill draughts of night. Two women were there, on couches to either side of the queen's door. One was Morgause's own waiting-woman, the other a nun, presumably excused the night offices, and set to share the watch on behalf of the convent. Both slept soundly, the nun, indeed, snoring in a slumber that seemed rather too heavy. On a table by the wall stood two cups, and the room smelled of spiced wine.

Gaheris's sword moved, but indecisively, then he saw that Mordred was not even looking at him, and lowered it again. Mordred said, on a whisper that was the merest thread of sound: "Put that up, you fool. I came on the King's orders, why do you think?"

"At this time of night? To do what?"

"Not to harm her, or would I have knocked on her door, or come naked as I am?"

The word, between soldiers, meant "unarmed," and to a knight was as good as a shield. He spread his empty hands wide. Gaheris, slowly, began to slide his blade back into its housing.

"Then what—" he was beginning, when Mordred, with a swift gesture commanding silence, stepped past him into the room, and, crossing to the table, picked up one of the cups and sniffed at it. "And the woman in the lodge could hardly keep awake long enough to see me through."

He met Gaheris's stare, and smiled, setting the cup down again. "The King sent me because a message came that she was ill, and failing. He would have come himself tomorrow. But now I think he need not." He lifted a hand quickly. "No, have no fear. It cannot be true. These women have been drugged, and it is easy to guess—"

"Drugged?" Gaheris seemed to take it in slowly, then his head moved, his eyes searching the dark corners of the room like an animal scenting an enemy, and his hand flew back to his hilt. He said, hoarsely: "Then it is danger!"

"No. No." Mordred moved quickly, to take his half-brother lightly by the arm, turning him away from the queen's door. "The drug is one of the queen's potions. I know that smell. So put your fears at rest, and come away. It's certain that she is neither ill nor in any other kind of danger. The King need not come in the morning, but no doubt you will be permitted to see her then. He has sent for the others already, in case the story is true."

"But how do you know—?"

"And keep your voice down. Come, we'll go. I want to show you some beautiful tapestries in the outer room." He smiled, shaking the other's unresponsive arm. "Oh, for the gods' sake, man, can't you see? She's got a lover with her, that's all! So neither you nor I can visit her tonight!"

Gaheris stood for a moment, rigid against Mordred's hand, then with a wild gesture he shook himself free and leaped for the bedchamber door. He ripped the curtain aside and flung the door back with a crash against the wall.

4

IN THE ENDLESS, STUPEFIED moment before anyone moved, they saw it all.

Lamorak naked, mounted, light slipping over the sweating muscles of his back. Morgause beneath him, hidden by shadows, except for the restless, eager hands, and the long hair spread across the pillows. Her night robe lay in a huddle on the floor, beside Lamorak's discarded clothing. His sword belt, with sword and dagger sheathed, was carefully laid across a stool at the other side of the room.

Gaheris made a sound hardly recognizable as human, and jerked wildly at his sword.

Mordred, two paces behind him, shouted a warning "Lamorak!" and grabbed again at his half-brother's arm.

Morgause screamed. Lamorak gasped, turned his head, saw, flung himself off the woman's body and ran for his sword. The move left her exposed to the merciless starlight: the sprawled flesh, the marks of love, the gaping mouth, the hands still weaving in air over the space where her lover's body had been.

The hands dropped. She recognized Gaheris in the doorway, with Mordred struggling to hold him, and the scream checked in a gasp as she hurriedly pushed herself up from the pillows and grabbed for the tumbled coverlet.

Gaheris, cursing, jerked the dagger from his belt and cut down at Mordred's restraining hand. The blade bit, and Mordred's grip loosened. Gaheris wrenched himself free.

Lamorak had reached the stool and snatched up his sword belt. Clumsily, still perhaps numb with shock, he wrenched at the hilt in the half-darkness, but the loose belt wrapped itself round his arm, and the hilt jammed. Wrenching at it, naked as he was, he turned to face the other sword.

Mordred, blood dripping from his cut hand, pushed past Gaheris, getting himself between the two men, then thrust the flat of both hands hard against his half-brother's chest.

"Gaheris! Wait! You can't kill an unarmed man. And not this, not here. Wait, you fool! He's a Companion; leave this to the King."

It is doubtful if Gaheris even heard him, or felt his hands. He was crying, on hard, sobbing breaths, and looked more than half mad. Nor did he make any attempt to push past Mordred to attack Lamorak. He swung suddenly round, away from both men, and raced for the queen's bed, his sword held high.

Clutching the coverlet to her, blinded by her hair, she tried to roll away and dodge him. She screamed again. Before the other men had even realized his purpose Gaheris, at the bedside, swung his sword up, and brought it down with all his strength across his mother's neck. And again. And yet again.

The only sound was the soft and dreadful hacking of metal into flesh and feathered bedding. Morgause died at the first blow. The coverlet dragged from her clutching hands, and the naked body fell back into the merciful shadows. Less mercifully the head, half severed, lolled into starlight on its blood-drenched pillows. Gaheris, himself drenched in the first dreadful fountain of blood, lifted the red sword for another blow, then, with a howl like a hurt dog, threw it aside with a clatter, and, flinging himself to his knees in the pool of blood, put his head down beside his mother's on the pillow and wept.

Mordred found that he was holding Lamorak with a grip that hurt them both. The killing had been so swift, so unlooked-for, that neither man had made any conscious move at all. Then Lamorak came to himself with a jerk and a gasping curse, and tried to arm Mordred aside. But Morgause was dead and beyond help, and her son knelt unheeding, uncaring, his unprotected back to them both, his sword ten paces away on the floor. Lamorak's blade wavered, and sank. Even here, even in this moment, the rigid training held. There had been a dreadful slaying done in hot blood. But now the blood was cold, the room was cold, and there was nothing to be done. Lamorak stood still in Mordred's grasp, his teeth beginning to chatter now with reaction, horror and the icy chill of shock.

Mordred let him go. He picked the knight's clothing up, and bundled it into his arms.

"Here, get these on, and go. There's nothing to be gained by staying. Even if he was fit to fight you now, it cannot be here, you know that." He stooped quickly for Gaheris's abandoned sword, then, taking Lamorak by the arm, urged him towards the bedroom door. "Into the other room now, before he comes to. The thing's done, and all we can do is prevent that madman from making it worse."

In the antechamber the women still slept. As Mordred shut and latched the door the nun stirred in her sleep and muttered something that could have been "Madam?" then slept again. The two men stood rigid, listening. No sound, no movement. Morgause's screaming, brief as it had been, had not been heard through the thick walls and closed doors.

Lamorak had hold of himself now. He was still very pale, and looked sick and haunted, but he made no attempt to argue with Mordred, and set himself to dress quickly, with only a glance or two at the shut door of the dreadful room.

"I shall kill him, of course," he said thickly.

"But not here." Mordred was cool. "So far you've done nothing that any man would blame you for. The King will be angry enough at the mess, without your adding to it. So take my advice and go now, quickly. What you do later is up to you."

Lamorak looked up from fastening his tunic. "What are you going to do?"

"Get you out of here, Gaheris away, and then report to the King. I was sent to do that anyway. Not that it matters now, but I suppose her tale of being ill, dying even, was pure invention?"

"Yes. She wanted to see the King and plead with him herself for release." He added, very softly: "I was going to marry her. I loved her, and she me. I had promised to talk with him myself tomorrow… today. If she were my wife, surely Arthur would have let her leave here, and live once more in freedom?"

Mordred did not reply. Another tool, he was thinking. I was once her pass to power, and now this man, poor gullible fool, was to be her pass to liberty. Well, she is gone, and the King will hardly be sorry, but in death, as in life, she will wreck the peace of all those near her.

He said: "You knew that the King had sent for Gawain and the other two already?"

"Yes. What will they — what will happen there?" A glance towards the door.

"Gaheris? Who knows? As for you… I said you were to be blamed for nothing. But they will blame you, be sure of that. It is even likely that, being the men they are, they will try to kill Gaheris, too. They like to keep sex and murder right in the family."

This, dry as spice-dust, made Lamorak, even through the grief and rage of the moment, look sharply at the younger man. He said, slowly, as if making a totally new discovery: "You — why, you're one of them. Her own son. And you talk as if… as if…"

"I am different," said Mordred, shortly. "Here, your cloak. No, that bloodstain's mine, you needn't mind it. Gaheris stabbed my hand. Now, for the Goddess' sake, man, go, and leave him to me."

"What will you do?"

"Lock the room so that the women don't screech the place down when they wake, and get Gaheris out the way he came in. You came in through the main gate, of course? Do the guards know you're still here?"

"No. I left in due discourse, and then… I have a way in. She used to leave a window open when she knew…"

"Yes, of course. But then, why trouble—?" He was going to ask. Why trouble to drug the women? but then he saw that Morgause's sexual affairs would necessarily have to be hidden from the abbess. The holy women could hardly be expected to connive at them.

"I'll have to leave court, of course," said Lamorak. "You will tell the King—?"

"I'll report exactly what happened. I don't imagine the King will blame you. But you'd do well to get away until Gawain and the others have been settled. Good luck and good speed."

Lamorak, with one last look towards the silent bedroom door, went from the room. Mordred glanced once again at the sleeping women, propped Gaheris's blood-stained sword in a shadowed corner where a faldstool hid it from view, then went back into the queen's bedchamber and shut the door behind him.

He found Gaheris on his feet, swaying like a drunken man and looking vaguely round him as if for something he had forgotten.

Mordred took him by the shoulder and drew him, unresisting, away from the bedside. Stooping, he twitched the stained coverlet across to cover the dead body. Gaheris, rigid as a sleepwalker, let himself be led from the room.

Once in the antechamber, and with the door shut, he spoke for the first time, thickly. "Mordred. It was right. It was right to kill her. She was my mother, but she was a queen, and to do thus… to bring shame on us and on all our line… No one can gainsay my right, not even Gawain. And when I kill Lamorak — that was Lamorak, wasn't it? Her — the man?"

"I didn't see who it was. He snatched up his clothes and went."

"You didn't try to hold him? You should have killed him."

"For the love of Hecate," said Mordred, "save all that for later. Listen, I thought I heard footsteps. It could be time for the night office. Anyone could come by."

This was not true, but it served to rouse Gaheris.

He gave a startled glance around, as if just waking to a perilous situation, and said sharply: "My sword?"

Mordred lifted it from the corner and showed it. "When we are outside the walls. Come. I saw where you left your horse. Quickly."

They were crossing the orchard before Gaheris spoke again. He was still on the treadmill of agonized guilt.

"That man. Lamorak, I know it was, and you know, too. You called his name. Don't try to shield him. Arthur's man, one of the Companions. He should be killed, too, and I shall do it. But she, she to lie with such a one… It must have happened before, you know. Those women were drugged. They must have been lovers—" He choked on the word, then went on: "She spoke of him once to me. Of Lamorak. She told me that he had killed our father King Lot, and that she hated him. She lied. To me. To me."

Mordred said, quietly: "Don't you see, Gaheris? She lied to blind you, and she lied twice. Lamorak never killed Lot, how could he? Lot died of the wounds he got at Caledon, and they fought on the same side there. So unless Lamorak stabbed King Lot in the back, and that was not his way, he could not be his killer. Did you never think of that?"

But Gaheris had no thoughts but the same trapped and torturing ones. "She took him as her lover, and lied to me. We were all deceived, even Gawain. Mordred, the others will say that what I did was right, will they not?"

"You know as well as I how likely Gawain is to forgive you this. Or Gareth. Even your twin may not support you. And though the King isn't likely to grieve for your mother, he'll have to listen if the Orkney princes demand what they will call justice."

"They will ask it on Lamorak!"

"For what?" said Mordred, coolly. "He would have married her."

That silenced Gaheris for a moment. They had reached the orchard wall, and he paused under the apple tree and turned. The moon was rising now behind a drift of cloud, and the bloodstains on his breast showed black.

"If they do not kill him, I shall," he said.

"You can try," said Mordred dryly. "And he will kill you, make no mistake. And then your brothers will try to kill him. So you see what this night's work has done?"

"And you? You seem to care nothing for what has happened. You speak as if it hardly touched you."

"Oh, it touches me," said Mordred briefly. "Now, we are wasting time. What's done is done. You will have to leave court, you know that. You will be well advised to get away before your brothers get here. Get over the wall now, Gaheris; your horse is there."

Gaheris swung himself over, and Mordred, climbing after him, stayed astride the wall while his brother untied the horse and checked the girths. Then he handed Gaheris's sword down into his hand.

"Where will you go?" he asked him.

"North. Not to the islands, and Dunpeldyr is held for Arthur as well. What is not? But I shall find a place where I can sell my sword."

"Meantime take my purse. Here."

"My thanks, brother." Gaheris caught it. He swung himself to the saddle. It brought him almost to Mordred's level. He hung on the rein for a moment while the roan horse danced, eager to move. "When you see Gawain and the others—"

"Tell them the truth and plead your cause for you? I'll do what I can. Farewell."

Gaheris pulled the horse's head round. Soon there was no sign of him except the fast soft thud of retreating hoofs. Mordred jumped down from the wall and walked back across the orchard.

5

SO DIED MORGAUSE, WITCH-QUEEN of Lothian and Orkney, leaving by her death and its manner another hellbrew of trouble for her hated brother.

The trouble was far-reaching. Gaheris suffered banishment, and Lamorak, riding white-faced and silent into headquarters to surrender his sword, was relieved of his command and bidden to absent himself until the dust should have time to settle.

This would not be soon. Gawain, savage with outraged pride rather than grief, swore on all the wild gods of the north to be avenged both on Lamorak and on his brother, and ignored all that Arthur could say to him, pleas and threats alike.

It was pointed out that Lamorak had offered marriage to Morgause, and that her acceptance gave him the betrothed's claim to her bed, and with it the right to avenge her murder himself. This right Lamorak, one of Arthur's first and most loyal Companions, had waived. Gaheris, he had sworn, was safe from him. But none of this appeased Gawain, whose anger had in it a large measure of sheer sexual jealousy.

Just as violent was Gawain's railing against Gaheris, but there he got no support from his brothers. Agravain, who had always been the leader of the twins, seemed lost without Gaheris; he tended to turn to Mordred, who, for reasons of his own, suffered him willingly enough. Gareth said little throughout, but withdrew into silence. In her death as in her life his mother had wronged him deeply: bitter as was the story of her dreadful death to her youngest son, the tales of her impurity, which were common knowledge now, wounded him more.

But all the shouts for vengeance had to die. Lamorak had gone, no one knew where. Gaheris had vanished northward into the mists, Morgause was buried in the convent graveyard, and Arthur went with his followers back to Camelot. Gradually, for sheer lack of fuel, the blaze kindled by the murder died down. Arthur, fond of his nephews, and secretly relieved at the news of Morgause's death, steered as carefully as he could between the shoals, kept the princes as busy as he might, gave Gawain as much authority as he dared, and waited with weary apprehension for the storm to break again. About Gaheris he could not bring himself to care overmuch, but Lamorak, who was innocent of all but folly, was almost certainly doomed. Some day Arthur's valued Companion would come against one of the Orkney princes, and be killed, fair or foul. Nor would it stop there. Lamorak, too, had a brother, at present serving in Dumnonia with one Drustan, a knight whom Arthur hoped to attract into his service. It was possible that he, or even Drustan himself — who was a close friend to both brothers — would in turn swear and require vengeance.

So Morgause, in her death, did what she had planned to do with her life. She had planted a canker in the blossoming chivalry of Arthur's court: not, ironically, the bastard she had reared to be his bane, but her three legitimate oldest, her wild, unpredictable and now almost ungovernable sons.

Outside it all stood Mordred. He had shown himself resourceful and cool, had prevented further bloodshed on that murderous night, and had gained time for good counsel. That the Orkney princes would not — some said could not — respond to good counsel was hardly his fault. It was noticeable that less and less did the court count him as one of the "Orkney brood." Subtly, the distance between him and his half-brothers increased. And with Morgause dead, men hardly troubled any longer with the fiction of "the High King's nephew." He was simply "Prince Mordred," and known to be close to the King and Queen in-love and favour.

Some time after Arthur's return to Camelot he called a council in the Round Hall.

It was the first such council that the two younger Orkney brothers had been entitled, as Companions, to attend. Even Mordred, who with Gawain had been given that status some years ago, met with a change: instead of sitting at the King's left, as had been his privilege over the past two years, he was led by the royal usher to the chair on Arthur's right, where Bedwyr usually sat. Bedwyr took the seat to the left. If he felt demoted he did not show it; he gave Mordred a smile that seemed genuine, and a ceremonious little bow that acknowledged his new status to the younger man.

Bedwyr, the King's friend of boyhood days, and constant companion in the closest sense, was a quiet man with the eyes of a poet, and, after the King's, the most deadly sword in the kingdoms. He had fought at Arthur's side through all the great campaigns, and with him shared the glory of wiping the Saxon Terror from Britain's boundaries. Possibly alone of the warrior lords, he showed no impatience with the long-drawn peace, and when Arthur had had to travel abroad at the request of allies or kinsmen, and take his fighting men with him, Bedwyr never seemed to resent the necessity of staying behind as regent for his king. Rumour, as Mordred well knew, gave reasons for this: Bedwyr had not married, and in the close company as he was of both King and Queen, it was whispered that he and Queen Guinevere were lovers. But Mordred, also constantly with them, had never caught a look or gesture that bore this out. Guinevere was as gay and kind to him as he had ever seen her with Bedwyr, and, perhaps with a little of the inbred jealousy taught by Morgause, he would have denied, even with his sword, any overt hint of such a connection.

So he returned Bedwyr's smile, and sat down in the new place of honour. He saw Gawain, leaning close to his brother, whisper something, and Agravain nodding, then the King spoke, opening the Council, and they fell silent. The meeting droned on. Mordred noticed with amusement how Agravain and Gareth, at first rigid with importance and attentive to every word, soon grew bored and impatient, and sat in their seats as if on thorns. Gawain, like the greybeard beside him, was frankly dozing in a shaft of sunshine from a window. The King, patient and painstaking as ever, seemed to throw off preoccupations with an effort. The round table in the middle of the hall was loaded heavily with papers and tablets, and by it the secretaries scribbled without ceasing.

As usual at the Round Hall councils, routine matters were dealt with first. Petitions were heard, complaints tabled, judgments given. King's messengers brought what information was fitted for the public ear, and later, those of the King's knights-errant who had returned home would report on their adventures to the Council.

These were the travelling knights who acted at once as Arthur's eyes and as his deputies. Years ago, once the Saxon wars were over and the country settled, Arthur had looked around for means to occupy what Merlin had called "the idle swords and the unfed spirits." He knew that the long and prosperous peace which contented most men was not to the liking of some of his knights, not the young men only, but the war veterans, men who knew no other life but that of fighting. There was no longer any need for the picked body of Companions, the knights who under Arthur had led the force of cavalry which had been used as such a swift and deadly weapon during the Saxon campaigns. The Companions remained his personal friends, but their status as commanders was changed. They were appointed personal representatives of the King himself, and, as deputies armed with royal warrants, and each in command of his own men, they travelled the kingdoms, answering the call of the petty kings or leaders who needed help or guidance, and taking with them the High King's justice and the High King's peace wherever they went. They also policed the roads. Robbers still lurked in the wilder parts of the country, haunting fords and crossways where traders or rich travellers might be ambushed. These they sought out and killed, or brought them back for the King's justice. One other and most important task was the protection of monasteries. Arthur, though not himself a Christian, recognized the growing importance of these foundations as centers of learning and as an influence for peace. Their hospitality, moreover, was a vital part of the peaceful commerce of the roads.

Three of these knights presented themselves now. As the first of them came forward there was a stir of interest in the hall, and even the sleepers roused themselves to attention. Sometimes the reports were of fighting; occasionally prisoners were brought in, or tales told of strange happenings in remote and wild parts of the country. This had given rise to the belief held by the ignorant, that Arthur never sat down to supper until he had heard some tale of marvels.

But there were no marvels to be presented. One man came from North Wales, one from Northumbria, the third — one of the knights deputed to watch the Saxon boundaries — from the upper Thames valley. This man reported some activity, though peaceful, in Suthrige, that region south of the Thames occupied by Middle Saxon settlers; some kind of official visit, he thought, from a party of Cerdic's West Saxons. The man from North Wales told of a new monastic foundation where the Christian grail, or cup of ceremonial, would be raised on the next feast day. The man from Northumbria had nothing to report.

Mordred, watching from his place beside the King, noticed with quickened interest that Agravain, waiting with obvious impatience through the speeches of the first two knights, went still and attentive while the last one spoke. When the man had done, and been dismissed with the King's thanks, Agravain visibly relaxed and went back to his yawning.

Northumbria? thought Mordred, then filed the thought away and turned his attention to the King.

At last the hall was cleared of all but councillors and Companions. Arthur sat back in the royal chair, and spoke.

He came straight to the news that had caused him to call the Council.

A courier from the Continent had arrived on the previous evening with grave tidings. Two of the three young sons of Clodomir, the Frankish king, had been murdered, and their brother had fled for sanctuary to a monastery, from which it was thought that he would not dare emerge. The murderers, the boys' uncles, would no doubt proceed to divide King Clodomir's kingdom between them.

The news carried grave implications. Clodomir (who had been killed a year ago in battle with the Burgundians) had been one of the four sons of Clovis, King of the Salian Franks, who had led his people out of their northerly lands down into what had once been the prosperous country of Roman Gaul, and had made it his own. Savage and ruthless, like all of the Merwing dynasty, he had nevertheless created a powerful and stable kingdom. At his death that kingdom had been divided, as was the custom, among his four sons. Clodomir and Childebert, the eldest legitimate sons, held the central part of Gaul: Clodomir to the east, his lands bordering on those of the hostile Burgundians; and Childebert to the west, in that part of Gaul which bordered and contained the peninsula of Brittany.

And here lay the rub.

Brittany, called Less Britain in the common tongue, was in fact almost a province of the High Kingdom. Over a century ago it had been populated by men from Greater Britain, and the tie remained strong; communication was easy and trade brisk, and the tongue, with slight regional variations, was the same. Brittany's king, Hoel, was cousin to Arthur, and the two kings were bound to one another, not only through kinship and treaties of alliance, but because Brittany was still as much part of the federation of lands known as the High Kingdom as was Cornwall, or the Summer Country round Camelot itself.

"The matter," said the King, "is not desperate; indeed, it may turn out for the best, since infants never make safe rulers. But you see the situation. Clodomir was killed at Vézeronce last year by the Burgundians. They are still hostile, and wait only for a chance to attack again. So we have the vital central province of the Franks, with the Burgundians to the east, and on the west the land ruled by King Childebert, which contains our own Celtic province of Brittany. Now Clodomir's kingdom will be divided yet again, in which case King Childebert will extend his lands eastward, while his brothers move in from north and south. Which means that, as long as we retain the friendship of these kings, we have them as a barrier between ourselves and the Germanic peoples to the east."

He paused, then, looking around, repeated: "As long as we have the friendship of these kings. I said the matter was not yet desperate. But in time it may be. We must prepare for it. Not yet, as some of you wish, by raising armies. That will come. But by forming alliances, bonds of friend ship, cemented by offers of help and fair trading. If the kingdoms of Britain are to remain secure against the destroyers from the east, then all the kingdoms within our sea-girt coasts must join together in their defense. I repeat, all."

"The Saxons!" said someone. It was Cian, a young Celt from Gwynedd.

"Saxons or English," said Arthur, "they own, by agreement, a good proportion of the eastern and south-eastern coastal lands, those which were the territories of the old Saxon Shore, with what other settlements were granted them by Ambrosius, and by myself after Badon Hill. These Saxon Shore lands lie like a wall along the Narrow Sea. They can be our bulwark, or they can betray." He paused. There was no need to gather eyes. All were fixed on him. "Now this is what I have to say to the Council. I have called a meeting with the chief of their kings, Cerdic of the West Saxons, to talk to him about defense. At our next Council I shall be prepared to tell you the result of that meeting."

He sat down then, and the ushers were on their feet, preventing uproar and trying to sort into order the men who wanted to speak. Under cover of the noise Arthur grinned at Bedwyr. "You were right. A hornets' nest. But let them talk it out, and have their say, and when I go it will be, nominally at least, with their support."

He was right. By supper time all who wanted to had said their say. Next day a courier rode to the village which the West Saxon king called his capital, and the meeting was arranged.

Mordred was to go with the King. He used the interval before Cerdic's reply came to ride over to Applegarth to see Nimuë.

6

SINCE THE DAY WHEN NIMUË had visited King Urbgen of Rheged, and prevented Mordred's escape, he had never seen her. She was married to Pelleas, king of the islands to the west of the Summer Country, where the River Brue meets the Severn Sea. Nimuë herself had been born a princess of the River Isles, and had known her husband since childhood. Their castle stood almost within sight of the Tor, and when Pelleas, who was one of Arthur's Companions, was with the King, Nimuë would take her place as Lady of the Lake maidens in the convent on Ynys Witrin, or else retire alone to Applegarth, the house that Merlin had built near Camelot, and which he had left to her, along with his title, and — men whispered — how much more. It was fabled that during the long illness that had weakened the old enchanter towards his seeming death, he had made over all his knowledge to his pupil Nimuë, implanting in her brain even his own childhood's memories.

Mordred had heard the stories, and though with manhood and security he had grown more skeptical, he remembered the impression he had received in Luguvallium of the enchantress's power, so he approached Applegarth with something that might even have been called nervousness.

It was a grey stone house, four-square round a small courtyard. An old tower jutted at one corner. The house stood cupped in rolling upland pastures, and was surrounded by orchards. A stream ran downhill past the walls.

Mordred turned his horse off the road and into the track that led uphill beside the stream. He was halfway towards the house when another horseman approached him. To his surprise he saw that it was the King, riding alone on his grey mare.

Arthur drew rein beside him. "Were you looking for me?"

"No, sir. I had no idea you were here."

"Ah, so Nimuë sent for you? She told me you were coming, but she did not tell me when, or why."

Mordred stared. "She said I was coming? How could she? I hardly knew it myself. I — there was something I wanted to ask her, so I rode here, you might say on impulse."

"Ah," said Arthur. He regarded Mordred with what looked like amusement.

"Why do you smile, sir?" Mordred was thinking, with thankfulness: He cannot begin to guess what was in my mind. Surely he cannot guess. But Nimuë…?

"If you have never met Nimuë, then gird your loins and put up your shield," said Arthur, laughing. "There's no mystery, at least not the kind ordinary mortals such as you and I can understand. She would know you were coming because she knows everything. As simple as that. She will even know why."

"That must save a world of words," said Mordred dryly.

"I used to say that. To Merlin." A shadow touched the King's face, and was gone. The amusement came back. "Well, good luck to you, Mordred. It is time you met the ruler of your ruler." And still laughing, he rode down the hill to the road.

Mordred left his horse at the archway that led into the courtyard, and went in. The place was full of flowers, and the scent of herbs and lavender, and doves crooned on the wall. There was an old man by the well, a gardener by his clothes, drawing water. He glanced up, touched a hand to his brow, and pointed the way to the tower door.

Well, thought Mordred, she is expecting me, isn't she?

He mounted the stone steps and pushed open the door.

The room was small and square, with one large window opening to the south, and beneath it a table. The only other furnishings were a cupboard, a heavy chair, and a couple of stools. A box stood on the table with books, neatly rolled, inside it. By the table, with her back to it and facing the door, stood a woman.

She neither spoke nor made any movement of greeting. What met him, forcibly as a cold blast, was her inimical and chilling gaze. He stopped dead in the doorway. A feeling of dread, formless and heavy, settled on him, as if the vultures of fate clung to his shoulders, their claws digging into his flesh.

Then it cleared. He straightened. The weight was gone. The tower room was full of light, and facing him was a tall, arrow-straight woman in a grey robe, with dark hair bound back with silver, and cool grey eyes.

"Prince Mordred."

He bowed. "Madam."

"Forgive me for receiving you here. I was working. The King comes often, and takes things as he finds them. Will you sit?"

He pulled a stool towards him and sat. He glanced at the littered table. She was not, as he half expected, brewing some concoction over the brazier. The "work" consisted, rather, of a litter of tablets and papers. An instrument which he did not recognize stood in the window embrasure, its end tilted towards the sky.

Nimuë seated herself, turned to Mordred, and waited.

He said directly: "We have not met before, madam, but I have seen you."

She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "The castle at Luguvallium? I knew you were nearby. You were hiding in the courtyard?"

"Yes." He added, wryly: "You cost me my liberty. I was trying to run away."

"Yes. You were afraid. But now you know that there was no reason for your fear."

He hesitated. Her tone was cold still, her look hostile. "Then why did you stop me? Did you hope then that the King would have me put to death?"

Her brows went up. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because of the prophecy."

"Who told you about it? Ah, yes, Morgause. No. I warned Urbgen to keep you close and see that you got to Camelot, because it is always better to keep a danger where one can see it, than let it vanish, and then wonder from what direction it will strike."

"So you agree that I am a danger. You believe in the prophecy."

"I must."

"Then you have seen it, too? In the crystal, or the pool, or—" He glanced towards the instrument by the window. "—The stars?"

For the first time there was something other than hostility in her look. She was watching him with curiosity, and a hint of puzzlement. She said slowly: "Merlin saw, and he made the prophecy, and I am Merlin."

"Then you can tell me why, if Merlin believed his own prophetic voices, he let the King keep me alive in the first place? I know why Morgause did; she saved me because she thought I would be his bane. She told me so, and then when I was grown she tried to enlist me as his enemy. But why did Merlin even let her bear me?"

She was silent for a few moments. The grey eyes searched him, as if they would draw the secrets from the back of his brain. Then she spoke.

"Because he would not see Arthur stained with the wrong of murder, whatever the cause. Because he was wise enough to see that we cannot turn the gods aside, but must follow as best we can the paths they lay out for us. Because he knew that out of seeming evil can come great good, and out of welldoing may come bane and death. Because he saw also that in the moment of Arthur's death his glory would have reached and passed its fullness, but that by that death the glory would live on to be a light and a trumpet-call and a breath of life for men to come."

When she stopped speaking it seemed as if a faint echo of her voice, like a harp string thrumming, wound on and on in the air, to vibrate at last into silence.

At length Mordred spoke. "But you must know that I would not willingly bring evil to the King. I owe him much, and none of it evil. He knew this prophecy from the start, and, believing it, yet took me into his court and accepted me as his son. How, then, can you suppose that I would willingly harm him?"

She said, more gently: "It does not have to be by your will."

"Are you trying to tell me that I can do nothing to avert this fate that you speak of?"

"What will be, will be," she said.

"You cannot help me?"

"To avoid what is in the stars? No."

Mordred, with a movement of violent impatience, got to his feet. She did not move, even when he took a stride forward and towered over her, as if he would strike her.

"This is absurd! The stars! You talk as if men are sheep, and worse than sheep, to be driven by blind fate to do the will of some ill-wishing god! What of my will? Am I, despite anything I may wish or do, condemned to be the death or bane of a man I respect, a king I follow? Am I to be a sinner — more, the worst of sinners, a parricide? What gods are these?"

She did not reply. She tilted her head back, still watching him steadily.

He said, angrily: "Very well. You have said, and Merlin has said, and Queen Morgause, who like you was a witch" — her eyes nickered at that, perhaps with annoyance, and he felt a savage pleasure at getting through to her — "that through me the King will meet his doom. You say I cannot avoid this. So? How if I took my dagger — thus — and killed myself here and now? Would that not avert the fate that you say hangs in the stars?"

She had not stirred at the dagger's flash, but now she moved. She rose from her stool and crossed to the window. She stood there with her back to him, looking out. Beyond the open frame was a pear tree, where a blackbird sang.

She spoke without turning.

"Prince Mordred, I did not say that Arthur would meet his doom by your hand or even by your action. Through your existence is all. So kill yourself now if you will it, but through your death his fate might come on him all the sooner."

"But then—" he began desperately.

She turned. "Listen to me. Had Arthur slain you in infancy, it might have happened that men would have risen against him for his cruelty, and that in the uprising he would have been killed. If you kill yourself now, it might be that your brothers, blaming him, would bring him to ruin. Or even that Arthur himself, spurring here to Applegarth at the news, would take a fall from his horse and die, or lie a cripple while his kingdom crumbled round him." She lifted her hands. "Now do you understand? Fate has more than one arrow. The gods wait behind cloud."

"Then they are cruel!"

"You know that already, do you not?"

He remembered the sickening smell of the burned cottage, the feel of the sea-washed bone in his hand, the lonely cry of the gulls over the beach.

He met the grey eyes, and saw compassion there. He said quietly: "So what can a man do?"

"All that we have," she said, "is to live what life brings. Die what death comes."

"That is black counsel."

"Is it?" she said. "You cannot know that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you cannot know what life will bring. All I can tell you is this: that whatever years of life are left for you and for your father, they will see ambition realized, and will bring fulfilment and their need of glory, both for him and for you."

He stood silent at that. It was more than he had imagined or expected, that she would give him not only a qualified hope, but the promise of a life fulfilled.

He said: "So it won't serve for me to leave court, and stay away from him?"

"No."

He smiled for the first time. "Because he wants me where he can see me? Because the arrow by daylight is better to face than the knife in the dark?"

There was a glimmer of a smile in reply. "You are like him," was all she said, but he felt the interview begin to lighten. A sombre lady, this one. She was beautiful, yes, but he would as soon, he thought, have touched a rousing falcon.

"You can't tell me any more? Anything?"

"I do not know more."

"Would Merlin know? And would he tell me?"

"What he knew, I know," she said again. "I told you, I am Merlin."

"You said this before. Is it some kind of riddling way of telling me that his power is gone, or just that I may not approach him?" He spoke with renewed impatience. "All my life I seem to have been listening to rumours of magical deaths and vanishings, and they are never true. Tell me straightly, if you will: if I go to Bryn Myrddin, will I find him?"

"If he wishes it, yes."

"Then he is still there?"

"He is where he always was, with all his fires and travelling glories round him."

As they talked the sun had moved round, and the light from the window touched her face. He saw faint lines on the smooth brow, the shadow of fatigue under the eyes, a dew of transparency on her skin.

He said abruptly: "I am sorry if I have wearied you."

She did not deny it. She said merely: "I am glad you came," and followed him to the tower doorway.

"Thank you for your patience," he said, and drew breath for a formal farewell, but a shout from the courtyard below startled him. He swung round and looked down. Nimuë came swiftly to his elbow.

"You'd better go down, and hurry! Your horse has slipped his tether, and I think he has eaten some of the new seedlings." Her face lit with mischief, young and alive, like that of a child who misbehaves in a shrine. "If Varro kills you with his spade, as seems likely, we shall see how the fates will deal with that!"

He kissed her hand and ran down to retrieve his horse. As he rode away she watched him with eyes that were once again sad, but no longer hostile.

7

MORDRED WAS HALF AFRAID that the King would ask him what his business had been with Nimuë, but he did not. He sent for his son next day and spoke of the proposed visit to the Saxon king, Cerdic.

"I would have left you in charge at home, which would have been useful experience for you, but it will be even more useful for you to meet Cerdic and attend the talks, so as ever I am leaving Bedwyr. I might almost say as regent, since officially I am leaving my own kingdom for a foreign one. Have you ever met a Saxon, Mordred?"

"Never. Are they really all giants, who drink the blood of babies?"

The King laughed. "You will see. They are certainly most of them big men, and their customs are outlandish. But I am told, by those who know them and can speak their tongue, that their poets and artists are to be respected. Their fighting men certainly are. You will find it interesting."

"How many men will you take?"

"Under truce, only a hundred. A regal train, no more."

"You can trust a Saxon to keep a truce?"

"Cerdic, yes, though with most Saxons it's a case of trust only from strength, and keep the memory of Badon still green. But don't repeat that," said Arthur.

Agravain was also in the chosen hundred, but neither Gawain nor Gareth. These two had gone north together soon after the council meeting. Gawain had spoken of travelling to Dunpeldyr and perhaps thence to Orkney, and, though suspecting that his nephew's real quest was far otherwise, Arthur could think of no good reason for preventing him. Hoping that Lamorak might have ridden westward to join his brother under Drustan's standard, he had to content himself with sending a courier into Dumnonia with a warning.

The King and his hundred set out on a fine and blowy day of June. Their way took them over the high downs. Small blue butterflies and dappled fritillaries fluttered in clouds over the flowery turf. Larks sang. Sunlight fell in great gold swaths over the ripening cropfields, and peasants, white with the blowing chalk dust, looked up from their work and saluted the party with smiles. The troop rode at ease, talking and laughing together, and the mood was light.

Except, apparently, for Agravain. He drew alongside Mordred where he was riding a little apart, some way behind the King, who was talking with Cei and Bors.

"Our first sally with the High King, and look at it. A carnival." He spoke with contempt. "All that talk of war, and kingdoms changing hands, and raising armies to defend our shores again, and this is all it comes to! He's getting old, that's what it is. We should drive these Saxons back into the sea first, and then it would be time enough to talk.… But no! What do we do? Here we ride with the duke of battles, and on a peace mission. To Saxons. Ally with Saxons? Pah!" He spat. "He should have let me go with Gawain."

"Did you ask to?"

"Of course."

"That was a peace mission, too," said Mordred, woodenly, looking straight between his horse's ears. "There was no trouble forecast in Dunpeldyr, only a little diplomatic talking with Tydwal, and Gareth along to keep it muted."

"Don't play the innocent with me!" said Agravain angrily. "You know why he's gone."

"I can guess. Anyone can guess. But if he does find Lamorak, or news of him, let us hope that Gareth can persuade him to show a little sense. Why else do you suppose Gareth asked to go?" Mordred turned and looked straight at Agravain. "And if he should come across Gaheris, you may hope the same thing yourself. I suppose you know where Gaheris is? Well, if Gawain catches up with either of them, you'd best know nothing about it. And I want to know nothing."

"You? You're so deep in the King's counsels that I'm surprised you haven't warned him."

"There was no need. He must know as well as you do what Gawain hopes to do. But he can't mew him up for ever. What the King cannot prevent, he will not waste time over. All he can do is hope, probably in vain, that wise counsel will prevail."

"And if Gawain does run across Lamorak, which might happen, even by accident, what do you expect him to do then?"

"Lamorak must protect himself. He's quite capable of it." He added: "Live what life brings. Die what death comes."

Agravain stared. "What? What sort of talk is that?"

"Something I heard recently. So what about Gaheris? Are you content for Gawain to run across him, too?"

"He'll not find Gaheris," said Agravain confidently.

"Oh, so you do know where he is?"

"What do you think? He got word to me, of course. And the King doesn't know that, you may be sure! He's not as all-knowing as you think, brother." He slid a sideways look at Mordred, and his lowered voice was sly. "There's quite a lot that he doesn't see."

Mordred did not answer, but Agravain went on without prompting: "Else he'd hardly go off on an unnecessary jaunt like this and leave Bedwyr in Camelot."

"Someone has to stay."

"With the Queen?"

Mordred turned to look at him again. The tone, the look, said what the bare words had not expressed. He spoke with contemptuous anger: "I'm no fool, nor am I deaf. I hear what the dirty tongues say. But you'd best keep yours clean, brother."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I don't need to. Let the King once hear—"

"If it's true they're lovers, he ought to hear."

"It cannot be true! Bedwyr is close to the King and Queen, yes, but—"

"And they do say the husband is always the last to guess."

Mordred felt a wave of fury so strong that it startled him. He began to speak, then, glancing towards the King's back and the riders to either side, said merely, in a low, suppressed voice: "Leave it. It's fool's talk anywhere, and here you might be overheard. And keep your tongue off it with me. I want no part of it."

"You were ready enough to listen when your own mother's virtue was questioned."

Mordred said, exasperated: "Questioned! I was there, my God! I saw her lying with him!"

"And cared so little that you let the man escape!"

"Let it go, Agravain! If Gaheris had killed Lamorak there, while the King was still negotiating with Drustan to leave Dumnonia and join the Companions—"

"You thought of that? Then? With her — them — that in front of your eyes?"

"Yes."

Agravain stared with bolting eyes. The blood flushed his cheeks and ran into his forehead. Then, with a sound of contempt and helpless fury, he reined his horse back so sharply that blood sprang on the bit. Mordred, relieved of his presence, rode on alone, until Arthur, turning, saw him there and beckoned him forward.

"See! There is the border. And we are awaited. The man in the center, the fair man in the blue mantle, that's Cerdic himself."

Cerdic was a big man, with silvery hair and beard, and blue eyes. He wore a long robe of grey, with over it a caped blue mantle. He was unarmed save for his dagger, but a page behind him bore his sword, the heavy Saxon broadsword, sheathed in leather bound with worked gold. On his long, carefully combed hair was a tall crown also of gold, elaborately chased, and in his left hand he held a staff which, from its golden finial and carved shaft, appeared to be a staff of royal office. Beside him waited an interpreter, an elderly man who, it transpired, had been son and grandson of federates, and had spent all his life within the bounds of the Saxon Shore.

Behind Cerdic stood his thegns, or warrior lords, dressed like their king save that where he wore a crown, they had tall caps of brightly coloured leather. Their horses, small beasts that showed almost like ponies beside Arthur's carefully bred cavalry mounts, were held in the background by their grooms.

Arthur and his party dismounted. The kings greeted one another, two tall men, richly dressed and glittering with jewels, dark and fair, eyeing one another over the unspoken truce like big dogs held back on leash. Then, as if some spark of liking had suddenly been kindled between them, they both smiled and, each at the same moment, held out a hand. They grasped one another's arms, and kissed.

It was the signal. The ranks of tall blond warriors broke, moving forward with shouts of welcome. The grooms came running forward with the horses, and the party remounted. Mordred, beckoned forward by the King, received Cerdic's ceremonial kiss, then found himself riding between the Saxon king and a red-haired thegn who was a cousin of Cerdic's queen.

It was not far to the Saxon capital, perhaps an hour's ride, and they took it slowly. The two kings seemed content to let their mounts pace gently, side by side, while they talked, with the interpreter craning to catch and relay what was said.

Mordred, on Cerdic's other side, could hear little, and after a while ceased trying to listen through the shouts and laughter of the troop, as Saxon and Briton tried to make themselves mutually understood. He and his neighbour, with gestures and grins, managed to exchange names: the red-haired thegn was called Bruning. A few of the Saxons — those who had spent all their lives in the federated territories of the Shore — knew enough of the others' language; these were mostly the older men; the younger men on both sides had to depend on goodwill and laughter to establish some sort of rapport. Agravain, scowling, rode apart with a small group of the younger Britons, who talked among themselves in low tones, and were ignored.

Mordred, looking about him, found plenty to interest him in the landscape that very soon began, even in the scant miles traversed, to look foreign. Lacking an interpreter, he and Bruning contented themselves with exchanging smiles from time to time, and occasionally pointing to some feature that they passed. The fields here were differently tilled; the instruments used by the working peasants were strange, some crude, some ingenious. Such buildings as they passed were very different from the stone-built structures he knew; here little stone was used, but the huts and shippons of the peasants showed great skill in the working of wood. The grazing cattle and flocks looked fat and well cared for.

A flock of geese, screaming, flapped across the road, sending the foremost of the horses rearing and plunging. The goosegirl, a flaxen child with round blue eyes and a lovely face aflame with blushes, scampered after them, waving her stick. Arthur, laughing, threw her a coin, and she called something in response, caught it, and ran off after her geese. The Saxons, it seemed, were not in awe of kings; indeed, the cavalcade that Agravain had angrily called a carnival now really began to bear that appearance. The younger men whistled and called after the running girl, who had kilted her long skirts up and was running as lightly as a boy, with a free display of long bare legs. Bruning, pointing, leaned across towards Mordred.

"Hwæt! Fæger mægden!"

Mordred nodded with a smile, then realized with surprise what had been slowly coming through to him now for some minutes. Through the shouting and laughter had come words here and there, and sometimes phrases, which, without consciously translating, he found himself understanding. "A fair maid! See!" The half-musical, half-guttural sounds were linked in his brain to images of his childhood: the smell of the sea, the tossing boats, the voices of fishermen, the beauty of the sharp-prowed ships that sometimes crossed the fishing grounds of the islanders; the big blond sailors who put into the Orcadian harbours in rough weather to shelter, or in fine weather to trade. He did not think they had been Saxons, but there must be many words and inflections common to Saxon and Norseman alike. He set himself to listen, and found sense coming back to him in snatches, as of poems learned in infancy.

But, being Mordred, he said nothing, and gave no sign. He rode on, listening.

Then they crossed the brow of a grassy hill, and the Saxon capital lay below them.

Mordred's first thought, on sighting Cerdic's capital, was that it was little more than a crudely built village. His second was amusement at the distance he, the fisherman's son, had travelled since the days when an even cruder village in the islands had struck him dumb with excitement and admiration.

The so-called capital of Cerdic was a large scattered collection of wooden buildings enclosed by a palisade. Within the palisade, centrally, stood the king's house, a big oblong structure, barnlike in size and made entirely of wood, with a steeply pitched roof of wattled thatch and a central vent for smoke. There was a door at either end of the hall, and windows, narrow and high, set at intervals along the walls. It was symmetrically built, and one would have said handsome, until memory recalled the gilded towers of Camelot and the great Roman-based stone structures of Caerleon or Aquae Sulis.

The other houses, also symmetrically built but much smaller, clustered around the king's house, apparently at random. Among them, beside them, even alongside their walls, stood the sheds for the beasts. The open spaces between the buildings swarmed with hens, pigs and geese, and children and dogs played in and out of the wheels of ox-carts, or among the scattered trees where the woodpiles stood. The air smelled of dung and freshly mown grass and wood-smoke.

The big gates stood wide open. The party rode through, under a cross-beam from which blew Cerdic's pennant, a slim, forked blue flag that cracked in the breeze like a whiplash. At the door of the hall stood Cerdic's queen, ready to receive the visitors into her house as her husband had received them into the kingdom's boundaries. She was almost as tall as her husband, crowned like him, and with her long flax-hair plaits bound with gold. She greeted Arthur, and after him Mordred and Cei, with the ceremonial kiss of welcome, and thereafter, to Mordred's surprise, accompanied the royal party into the hall. The rest of the troop stayed outside, where, in time, the distant shouting and the clash of metal and the hammering of hoofs indicated that the younger warriors, Saxons and British together, were competing in sport on the field outside the palisade.

The royal party, with the interpreter in attendance, seated themselves beside the central hearth, where the fire, freshly piled, was not yet lighted. Two girls, like fair copies of Cerdic, came carrying jugs of mead and ale. The queen herself, rising, took the jugs from her daughters' hands and poured for the guests. Then the maidens went, but the queen remained, seating herself again on her lord's left.

The talk, necessarily slowed by the need for translation, went on through the afternoon. For a beginning, the discussion kept mainly to home matters, trade and markets, and a possible revision, in the future, of the boundary between the kingdoms. Only as a corollary to this, the talk turned eventually on the possibility of mutual military aid. Cerdic was already conscious of the growing pressures being exerted against his countrymen in their ever-narrowing territory on the Continent. The East Saxons, more vulnerable than Cerdic's people, were already seeking alliances with the English between the Thames and the Humber. He himself had approached the Middle Saxons of Suthrige. When Arthur asked if he, Cerdic, had also explored an alliance with the South Saxons, whose kingdom, in the far south-east corner of Britain, was the nearest landfall for any ships from across the Narrow Sea, Cerdic was guarded. Since the death of the great leader of the South Saxons, Aelle, there had been no ruler of note. "Nithings" was the West Saxon king's expressive word. Arthur did not pursue the question, but turned to the news from the Continent. Cerdic had not heard of the death of Clodomir's children, and looked grave as he considered the probable changes that would ensue, and the increasingly hazardous position of Brittany, the only buffer state between the Shore territories of Britain and the threatened Frankish kingdoms. As the time wore on, it no longer seemed so outlandish an idea that at some time in the near future, Briton and Saxon might have to be at one in the defense of their country's shores.

At length the talk came to a close. In the doorway of the hall the sunlight slanted low and mellow. From the field outside, the sounds of sport had died down. Cattle were lowing as they were driven in for milking, and the smell of wood fires sharpened the air. The breeze had dropped. The queen rose and left the hall, and presently servants came running to set the boards up for supper, and to thrust a torch into the kindling for the fire.

Somewhere, a horn sounded. The warriors, Cerdic's and Arthur's together, came in still gay with their sport, and took their places, apparently at random, at the long tables, where, shouting as loudly as if still out on the open down, and hammering on the board with the handles of their daggers, they called for food and drink. The noise was tremendous. Arthur's Companions, after a few moments of deafened confusion, cheerfully joined in the tumult. Language ceased to matter. What was being said was more than clear to everyone. Then a fresh shouting arose as ale and mead were brought in, and after that the great trays of roasted meats, still smoking and sizzling from the ovens; and the Saxon thegns, who until then had been trying, with gestures and yells of laughter, to communicate, ceased abruptly and turned all their ferocious attention to eating and drinking. Someone handed Mordred a horn — it was polished like ivory and most beautifully mounted with gold — someone else filled it till it slopped over, then he in his turn had to give his full attention to his platter, which soon meant parrying his neighbours' efforts to pile his dish again and again with the best of the food.

The ale was strong and the mead stronger. Many of the warriors were soon drunk, and slept where they sat. Some, too, of Arthur's train succumbed to the overwhelming hospitality, and began to doze. Mordred, still sober, but knowing that he was only so by an effort, narrowed his eyes against the low sun from the open door, and looked to see how the kings were faring. Cerdic was flushed, and leaning back in his chair, but still talked; Arthur, though his platter was empty, looked as cool as might be in that heated hall. Mordred saw how he had done it: His big hound, Cabal, lay by his chair, licking his chops under the table.

The sun set, and presently torches were lit, filling the hall with smoky light. In the still evening the fire burned brightly, the smoke filtering up through the vent in the thatch, or drifting among the diners to make them cough and wipe their eyes. At length, when the platters were empty, and the drinking horns held out less frequently for filling, the entertainment began.

First came a troop of gleemen, who danced to the music of trumpets and horns, and with them a pair of jugglers who, first with coloured balls, then with daggers or with anything those lords still sober threw to them, made dazzling patterns in the smoky air. The two kings threw money down, and the gleemen, scooping it up, bowed and went, still jigging and dancing. Then the harper took his place. He was a thin dark man, in an embroidered robe that looked costly. He set his stool near the hearth, and bent his head to tune the strings. Mordred saw Arthur turn his head quickly at the sound, then sink back in his chair to listen, his face in shadow.

Gradually the noise in the hall sank to a silence qualified only by some drunken snoring, and an occasional snarling wrangle from the dogs fighting in the straw for scraps.

The harper began to sing. His voice was true, and, as such men are, he was learned in tongues. He sang first in the guests' language, a love song, and then a lament. Then, in his own tongue, he sang a song which, after the first half-dozen lines, held every man there who could hear it, whether he understood the words or not.

Bruning the redhead, who was opposite Mordred, was sitting as still as a mouse, with the tears running down his face. Mordred, moved at the touch of some long-forgotten grief, had to exert all his self-command not to show his own emotion. Suddenly, as if his name had been called, he turned to find his father watching him. The two men's eyes, so like, locked and held. In Arthur's was something of the look that he had seen in Nimuë's: a helpless sadness. In his own, he knew, were rebellion and a fierce will. Arthur smiled at him and looked away as the applause began. Mordred got swiftly to his feet and went out of the hall.

Throughout the long feasting men had gone out from time to time to relieve themselves, so no one queried his going, or even glanced after him.

The gates were shut, but within the palisade the place was clear. Beasts, poultry and children had all been herded in with sunset to supper and bed, and now the menfolk and their women were mostly withindoors. He paced slowly along in the shadow of the palisade, trying to think.

Nimuë and her stark message: Your will is nothing, your existence is all. The King, who many years back had had the same message, and had left it to those cruel, clouded gods…

But there would be ambition fulfilled, and his due of glory.

Not, of course, that a practical man believed in such soothsaying. Nor could he believe, by the same token, in the prophecies of doom.…

He pressed a palm to his forehead. The air felt cool and sweet after the smoky reek of the hall. Gradually his brain cleared. He knew how far he must be from realizing his ambitions, those secret ambitions and desires. It would be many years, surely, before he or the King need fear what the evil gods might have in store. What Arthur had done for him all those years ago, he could do for Arthur now. Forget "doom," and wait for the future to show itself.

A movement in the shadow of a tall woodpile caught his eye. A man, one of Arthur's followers. Two men; no, three. One of them moved across the glow of a distant cooking fire, and Mordred recognized Agravain. Not out here simply to relieve himself. He had seated himself on the shaft of that cart that stood empty by the woodpile, and his two companions stood by him, bending near and talking eagerly. One of them, Calum, he knew; the other he thought he recognized. Both were young Celts, close friends of Agravain and formerly of Gaheris. When Agravain had left Mordred's side in anger during the ride, he had re-joined the group where these two were riding, and snatches of their conversation had come from time to time to Mordred's ears.

Abruptly, all thought of Nimuë and her cloudy stars went from his head. The Young Celts; the phrase had recently taken on something of a political meaning, in the sense of a party of young fighting men drawn mostly from the outland Celtic kingdoms, who were impatient with "the High King's peace" and the centralization of lowland government, and bored with the role of peaceful law-enforcement created for his knights-errant. There had been little open opposition; the young men tended to sneer at the "old man's market-place" of the Round Hall; they talked among themselves, and some of the talk, it was rumoured, verged on sedition.

Such as the whispering, which in recent weeks had grown as if somehow carefully fostered, about Bedwyr and Queen Guinevere.

Mordred moved silently away until a barn interposed its bulk between him and the little group of men. Pacing, head bent, brain working coolly now, he thought back.

It was true that in all his close dealings with them, he had never seen the Queen favour Bedwyr by word or look above other men, except as Arthur's chief friend, and in Arthur's presence. Her bearing towards him was, if anything, almost too ceremonious. Mordred had wondered, sometimes, at the air of constraint that could occasionally be felt between two people who had known one another for so long, and in such intimacy. No — he checked himself — not constraint. Rather, a distance carefully kept, where no distance seemed to be necessary. Where in fact distance seemed hardly to matter. Several times Mordred had noticed that Bedwyr seemed to know what the Queen meant without her having to put her thoughts into words.

He shook the thought away. This was poison, the poison Agravain had tried to distil. He would not even think this way. But there was one thing he could do. Like it or not, he was linked with the Orkney brothers, and lately most closely with Agravain. If Agravain approached him again, he would listen, and find out if the Young Celts' dissatisfaction was anything more than the natural rebellion of young men against the rule of their elders. As for the whispering campaign concerning Bedwyr and the Queen, that was surely only a matter of policy, too. A wedge driven in between Arthur and his oldest friend, the trusted regent who held his seal and acted as his other self, that would be the aim of any party seeking to weaken the High King's position and undermine his policies. There, too, he must listen; there, too, if he dared, he must warn the King. Of the slanders only; there were no facts; there was no truth in tales of Bedwyr and the Queen.…

He pushed the thought aside with a violence that was, he told himself, a tribute to his loyalty to his father, and his gratitude to the lovely lady who had shown such kindness to the lonely boy from the islands.

On the ride home he stayed away from Agravain.

8

HE COULD NOT AVOID HIM, though, once they were back in Camelot.

Some time after their return from Cerdic's capital the King sent again for Mordred, and asked him to stay close and watch his half-brother.

It transpired that word had come from Drustan, the famous fighting captain whom Arthur had hoped to attract to his standard, that, his term of service in Dumnonia being done, he himself, his northern stronghold and his troop of trained fighting men would soon be put at the High King's disposal. He was even now on his way north to his castle of Caer Mord, to put it in readiness, before coming on himself to Camelot.

"So far, good," said Arthur. "I need Caer Mord, and I had hoped for this. But Drustan, for some affair of honour in the past, is sworn blood-brother to Lamorak, and has, moreover, Lamorak's own brother, Drian, at present in his service. I believe you know this. Well, he has already made it clear that he will require me to invite Lamorak back to Camelot."

"And will you?"

"How can I avoid it? He did no wrong. Perhaps he chose his time badly, and perhaps he was deceived, but he was betrothed to her. And even if he had not been," said the King wryly, "I am the last man living who would have the right to condemn him for what he did."

"And I the next."

The King sent him a glance that was half a smile, but his voice was sober. "You see what will happen. Lamorak will come back, and then, unless the three older brothers can be brought to see reason, we shall have a blood feud that will split the Companions straight through."

"So Lamorak is with Drustan?"

"No. Not yet. I have not told you the rest. I know now that he went to Brittany, and has been lodging there with Bedwyr's cousin, who keeps Benoic for him. I have had letters. They tell me that Lamorak has left Benoic, and it is believed that he has taken ship for Northumbria. It seems likely that he knows of Drustan's plans, and hopes to join him at Caer Mord. What is it?"

"Northumbria," said Mordred. "My lord, I believe — I know — that Agravain is in touch with Gaheris, and I also have reason to suspect that Gaheris is somewhere in Northumbria."

"Near Caer Mord?" asked Arthur sharply.

"I don't know. I doubt it. Northumbria is a big country, and Gaheris surely cannot know of Lamorak's movements."

"Unless he has news of Drustan's, and makes a guess, or Agravain has heard some rumour here at court, and got word to him," said Arthur. "Very well. There is only one thing to do: get your brothers back here to Camelot, where they may be watched and to some extent controlled. I shall send to Gawain with a strong warning, and summon him south again. Eventually, if I have to, and if Lamorak will agree, I shall let Gawain offer him combat, here, and publicly. That should surely suffice to cool this bad blood. How Gawain receives Gaheris is his own affair; there, I cannot interfere."

"You'd have Gaheris back?"

"If he is in Northumbria, and Lamorak is making for Caer Mord, I must."

"On the principle that it is better to watch the arrow flying, than leave it to strike unseen?"

For a moment Mordred thought he had made a mistake. The King flashed a quick glance at him, as if about to ask a question. Perhaps Nimuë had used the same image to him, and about Mordred himself. But Arthur passed it by. He said: "I shall leave this to you, Mordred. You say that Agravain is in touch with his twin. I shall let it be known that the sentence on Gaheris is rescinded, and send Agravain to bring him back. I shall insist that you go with him. It's the best I can do; I distrust them, but beyond sending you I dare not show it. I can hardly send troops to make sure they come back. Do you think he will accept this?"

"I think so. I'll contrive it somehow."

"You realize that I am asking you to be a spy? To watch your own kinsmen? Is this something you can bring yourself to do?"

Mordred said, abruptly: "Have you ever watched a cuckoo in the nest?"

"No."

"They are all over the moors at home. Almost as soon as they are hatched, they throw their kin out of the nest, and remain—" He had been going to add "to rule," but stopped himself in time. He did not even know that he had thought the words. He finished, lamely: "I only meant that I shall be breaking no natural law, my lord."

The King smiled. "Well, I am the first to assert that my son would be better than any of Lot's. So watch Agravain for me, Mordred, and bring them both back here. Then perhaps," he finished a little wearily, "given time, the Orkney swords may go back into the sheath."

Soon after this, on a bright day at the beginning of October, Agravain followed Mordred as he walked through the market-place in Camelot, and overtook him near the fountain.

"I have the King's permission to ride north. But not alone, he says. And you are the only one of the knights he can spare. Will you come with me?"

Mordred stopped, and allowed a look of surprise to show. "To the islands? I think not."

"Not to the islands. D'you think I'd go there in October? No." Agravain lowered his voice, though no one was near except two children dabbling their hands in the fountain. "He tells me that he will revoke the ban on Gaheris. He'll let him come back to court. He asked me where he might send the courier, but I told him I was pledged, and couldn't break a pledge. So he says now that I may go myself to bring him back, if you go with me." A sneer, thinly veiled. "It seems he trusts you."

Mordred ignored the sneer. "This is good news. Very well, I'll go with you, and willingly. When?"

"As soon as may be."

"And where?"

Agravain laughed. "You'll find out when you get there. I told you I was pledged."

"You've been in touch all this time, then?"

"Of course. Wouldn't you expect it?"

"How? By letter?"

"How could he send letters? He has no scribe to read or write for him. No, from time to time I've had messages from traders, fellows like that merchant over there who is setting up his cloth stall. So get yourself ready, brother, and we'll go in the morning."

"A long journey? You'll have to tell me that, at least."

"Long enough."

The children, back at their play, sent a ball rolling past Mordred's feet. He reached a toe after it, flipped it up, caught it, and sent it back to them. He dusted his hands together, smiling.

"Very well. I'd like to go with you. It will be good to ride north again. You still won't tell me where we'll be bound for?"

"I'll show you when we get there," repeated Agravain.

They came at length, at the end of a dull and misty afternoon, to a small half-ruined turret on the Northumbrian moors.

The place was wild and desolate. Even the empty moors of mainland Orkney, with their lochs, and the light that spoke of the ever-present sea, seemed lively in comparison with this.

On every hand stretched the rolling fells, the heather dark purple in the misty light of evening. The sky was piled with clouds, and no glimmer of sun spilled through. The air was still, with no wind, no fresh breath from the sea. Here and there streams or small rivers, their courses marked with alders and pale rushes, divided the hills. The tower was set in a hollow near one such stream. The land was boggy, and boulders had been set as stepping-stones across a stretch of mire. The tower, thickly covered with ivy, and surrounded with stumps of mossy fruit trees and elderberries, seemed, once, to have been a pleasant dwelling; could be still, on a sunny day. But on this misty autumn evening it was a gloomy place. At one window of the tower a dim light showed.

They tethered their horses to a thorn tree, and rapped at the door. It was opened by Gaheris himself.

He had only been away from court for a few months, but already he looked as if he had never been in civilized company. His beard, carrot red, was half grown, his hair unkempt and hanging loose over his shoulders. The leather jerkin that he wore was greased and dirty. But his face lit with pleasure at seeing the two men, and the embrace he gave Mordred was the warmest that the latter had yet received from him.

"Welcome! Agravain, I'd hardly hoped that you'd get away, and come here to see me! And Mordred, too. Does the King know? But you'll have kept your word, I don't need to ask that. It seems a long time. Ah, well, come in and rest yourselves. You'll have plenty to tell me, that's for sure, so be welcome, and come in."

He led them to a smallish room in the curve of the tower wall, where a peat fire burned, and a lamp was lit. A girl sat by the hearth, stitching. She looked up, half shy, half scared at the sight of company. She had a longish pale face, not uncomely, and soft brown hair. She was poorly dressed in a gown of murrey homespun, whose clumsy folds did nothing to disguise the signs of pregnancy.

"My brothers," said Gaheris. "Get them something to eat and drink, then see to their horses."

He made no attempt to present her to them. She got to her feet, and, murmuring something, gave a quick, unpracticed curtsey. Then, laying aside her sewing, she trod heavily to a cupboard at the other side of the room, and took from it wine and meat.

Over the food, which the girl served to them, the three men spoke of general things: the turmoil in the Frankish kingdoms, Brittany's plight, the Saxon embassy, the comings and goings of Arthur's knights-errant, and the gossip of the court, though not as the latter touched the King and Queen. The way the girl loitered wide-eyed over her serving was warning enough against talk of that kind.

At last, at a brusque word from Gaheris about the care of the visitors' horses, she left them.

As the latch fell behind her, Agravain, who had been straining like a hound in the slips, said abruptly: "It's good news, brother."

Gaheris set his goblet down. Mordred saw, with fastidious distaste, that his nails were rimmed with black. He leaned forward. "Tell me, then. Gawain wants to see me? He knows now that I had to do it? Or" — his eyes glinted in a quick sidelong look, very bright "—he's found where Lamorak is, and wants to join forces?"

"No, nothing like that. Gawain's still in Dunpeldyr, and there's been no word, nothing about Lamorak." Agravain, never subtle, was patently telling the truth as he knew it. "But good news, all the same. The King has sent me to take you back to court. You're free of it, Gaheris, as far as he's concerned. You're to go back to Camelot with Mordred and me."

A pause, then Gaheris, flushing to the eyebrows, let out a yell of glee, and tossed up his empty goblet and caught it again. With his other hand he reached for the wine jug, and poured again for all of them.

"Who's the girl?" asked Mordred.

"Brigit? Oh, her father was steward here. The place was under a siege of a sort from a couple of outlaw fellows, and I killed them. So I got the freedom of the place."

"Freedom indeed." Agravain grinned, drinking. "What does the father say to it? Or did you have to wed her?"

"He said the father was steward." Mordred's dry tone laid slight emphasis on the second verb.

Agravain stared, then nodded briefly. "Ah. Yes. No wedding, then?"

"None." Gaheris set his goblet down with a rap. "So forget that. No strings there. Come, let's have it all."

And, the girl dismissed, the twins plunged into talk of the King's pardon, his possible intentions and those of Gawain. Mordred, listening, sipping his wine, said very little. But he noticed that, surprisingly enough, Lamorak's name was not mentioned again.

Presently the girl came back, took her seat again, and picked up her sewing. It was a small, plain garment of some kind, probably, thought Mordred, for the coming child. She said nothing, but her eyes went from one twin to the other, watching and listening intently. There was anxiety in them now, even a trace of fear. Neither of the twins made any attempt to conceal the elation which both felt at Gaheris's recall to Camelot.

At length, with the lamp guttering and smoking, they prepared to sleep. Gaheris and the girl had a bed not far from the fire, and this, apparently, they were ready to share with Agravain. Mordred, to his relief and slight surprise, was taken outside into the cool fresh night and shown a flight of stone steps curving round the outside of the tower. This led to a small upper chamber, where the air, though chill, was fresh and clean, and a pile of heather and rugs made a bed better than many he had slept on. Tired from the ride, and the talk, he slipped off his clothes, and was soon fast asleep.

When he awoke it was morning. Cocks crowed outside, and a chill grey light filtered through the cobwebs of the slit window. There was no sound from the room below.

He threw back the covers and padded barefooted across to look out of the window. From here he could see the tumbledown shed that served as stable and henhouse combined. The girl Brigit was standing there, a basket of eggs on the ground beside her. She was scattering some remains of last night's food for the hens, which pecked and scratched, clucking, round her feet.

The stable was an open structure, back and side walls, a stone manger, and a sloping roof supported on pillars made from hewn pine trunks. From the window he could see the whole of the interior. And what he saw there sent him back to the bedplace, to snatch up his clothes and begin to dress with feverish haste.

There was only one horse standing in the stable. His own. The ropes that had tied his half-brothers' beasts trailed in the straw among the strutting hens.

He dressed quickly. No use cursing himself. Whatever had led his brothers to deceive him and to ride off without him, he could not have foreseen. He snatched up his sword belt, and, still buckling it on, ran down the stone steps. The girl heard him, and turned.

"Where have they gone?" he demanded.

"I don't know. Hunting, I think. They said not to wake you, and they will come back soon for breakfast." But she looked scared.

"Don't fool with me, girl. This is urgent. You must have some idea where they've gone. What do you know?"

"I — no, sir. I don't know. Truly, sir. But they will come back. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps two days. I will look after you well—"

He was towering over her. He saw that she had begun to tremble. He took hold of himself, and spoke more gently.

"Listen — Brigit, isn't it? Don't be afraid of me. I shall not hurt you. But this is important. It's King's business. Yes, as important as that. To begin with, how long have they been gone?"

"About four hours, lord. They went even before dawn."

He bit his lip. Then, still gently: "Good girl. Now, there must be more that you can tell me. You must have heard them talking. What did they say? They were riding out to meet someone, is that it?"

"Y — yes. A knight."

"Did they mention a name? Was it Lamorak?"

She was trembling now, and her hands twisted together in front of her.

"Was it? Go on. Speak. You must tell me."

"Yes. Yes. That was the name. He was an evil knight who had dishonoured my lord's mother. He told me of it before."

"Where did they expect to meet this Lamorak?"

"There's a castle on the shore, many miles from here. When my lord went into the village yesterday, he heard — the traders pass through, and he goes for news — he heard that this knight Lamorak was expected there." The words were tumbling out now. "He was expected by sea, from Brittany, I think, and there is no harbour near the castle, no landing that is safe, with the weather we've been having, so they expected he would land half a day's ride to the south, and then, when he had found himself a horse, he would ride up the coast road. My lord Gaheris wanted to meet him there, before he got to the castle."

"Waylay him, you mean, and murder him!" said Mordred savagely. "That is, if Lamorak does not kill him first. And his brother, too. It's very possible. He is a veteran, one of the King's Companions, and a good fighter. He is also a man dear to the King."

She stared, her face whitening. Her hands crept, shaking, to clasp one another below her breast, as if to protect the child who lay there.

"If you value your lord's life," said Mordred grimly, "you'll tell me everything. This castle. Is it Caer Mord?"

She nodded dumbly.

"Where is it, and how far?" He put out a hand. "No, wait. Get me some food, quickly, while I saddle my horse. Anything. You can tell me the rest later, while I eat. If you want to save your lord's life, help me to get on my way. Hurry now."

She caught up the basket of eggs, and ran. He dashed water over face and hands at the trough, then threw saddle and bridle on his horse, and, leaving it tethered, ran back into the tower. The girl had set bread and meat on the table by the cold ashes of the fire. She was crying as she poured wine for him.

He drank quickly, and chewed bread, washing it down with more of the wine.

"Now, quickly. What happened? What more did you hear?"

The threat to Gaheris had loosened her tongue. She told him readily: "After you'd gone up last night, sir, they were talking. I was in bed. I went to sleep, then when my lord did not come to bed, I woke, and I heard…"

"Well?"

"He was speaking of this Lamorak, who was coming to Caer Mord. My lord was full of joy because he has sworn to kill him, and now his brother had come, just at the right moment to go with him. He said—my lord said—that it was the work of the Goddess who had brought his brother to help him avenge his mother's death. He had sworn on his mother's blood…" She faltered and stopped.

"Yes? Did he tell you who shed his mother's blood?"

"Why, the evil knight! Was it not so, lord?"

"Go on."

"So he was overjoyed, and they planned to ride straight away, together, without telling you. They did not come to bed at all. They thought I was asleep, and they went out very quietly. I — I did not dare let them know I had heard what was said, but I was afraid, so I lied to you. My lord talked as if—" she gulped, "—as if he were mad."

"So he is," said Mordred. "All right. This is what I feared. Now tell me which way they have taken." Then, as she hesitated again: "This is an innocent man, Brigit. If your lord Gaheris kills him, he will have to answer to the High King Arthur. Now, don't weep, girl. The ship may not be in yet, nor Lamorak on the road. If you tell me the way, I may well catch them before the harm is done. My horse is rested, where Agravain's is not." He thought, with a thread of pity running through the desperate need for haste, that whatever happened the girl had probably seen the last of her lover, but there was nothing he could do about that. She was just another innocent to add to the toll that Morgause had taken through her life and death.

He poured some of the wine for her, and pushed the cup into her hand. "Come, drink. It will make you feel better. Quickly now. The way to Caer Mord."

Even this small act of kindness seemed to overset her. She drank, and gulped back her tears. "I am not sure, lord. But if you ride to the village — that way — and down to the river, you will find a forge there, and the smith will tell you. He knows all the ways." And then, sobbing afresh: "He will not come back, will he? He will be killed, or else he will leave me, and go south to the great court, and I have nothing, and how will I care for the child?"

Mordred laid three gold pieces on the table. "These will keep you. And as for the child—" He stopped. He did not add: "You will do well to drown it at birth." That went too close for comfort. He merely said goodbye, and went out into the grey dawning.

By the time he reached the village the sky was whitening, and here and there folk were stirring to their work. The tavern doors were shut, but a hundred paces on, where the roadway forded a shallow stream, the forge fires were lit, and the smith stretched himself, yawning, with a cup of ale in his hand.

"The road to Caer Mord? Why, this road, master. A matter of a day's ride. Go as far as the god-stone, then take the eastward track for the sea."

"Did you hear horsemen going this way in the night?"

"Nay, master. When I sleep, I sleep sound," said the smith.

"And the god-stone? How far?"

The smith ran his expert's eye over Mordred's horse. "Yon's a good beast you've got there, master, but you've come a long ways, maybe? I thought so. Well, then, not pressing him, say by sunset? And from there, a short half hour to the sea. It is a good road. You'll be safe at Caer Mord, and no mishaps, well before dark."

"That I doubt," said Mordred, setting spurs to his horse, and leaving the smith staring.

9

TO MORDRED THE ORKNEY MAN the god-stone, standing alone on the rolling moor, was a familiar sight. And yet not quite familiar. It was a tall standing stone, set in the lonely center of the moor. He had passed its mate many a time, single, or standing with others in a wide ring, on the Orkney moors; but there the stones were thinly slabbed and very high, toothed or jagged as they had been broken from the living cliff. This stone was massive, of some thick grey whinstone carefully shaped into a thick, tapering pillar. There was a flat altar-like slab at its base, with a dark mark on it that might be dried blood.

He reached it at dusk, as the sun, low and red, threw its long shadow across the black heather. He trotted the tired horse up to it. At its base the track forked, and he turned the beast's head to the south-east. From the pale wild look of the sky ahead, and something more than familiar in the air that met him, he knew that the sea could not be far away. Ahead, on the edge of the heather moor, was a thick belt of woodland.

Soon he was among the trees, and the horse's hoofs fell silently on the thick felt of pinedrift and dead leaves. Mordred allowed it to drop to a walk. He himself was weary, and the horse, which had gone bravely through the day, was close to exhaustion. But they had travelled fast, and there was a chance that he might still be in time.

Behind him the clouds, piling up, stifled the colours of sunset. With the approach of evening, a wind got up. The trees rustled and sighed. Sooner than he expected, the forest began to thin, and lighter sky showed beyond the trunks. There was a gap there; the gap, perhaps, where the road ran?

He was answered almost immediately. There must have been other sounds, of hoofs and clashing metal, but the wind had carried them away from him, and the sighing of the trees had drowned them. But now, from almost straight ahead, there came a cry. Not of warning, or of fear, or anger, but a cry of joy, followed by a shout of triumph, and then a yell of laughter, so wild as to sound half mad. The horse's ears pricked, then went flat back to its skull, and its eyes rolled whitely. Mordred struck the spurs in, and the tired beast lurched into a heavy canter.

In the forest's darkness he missed the narrow track. The horse was soon blundering through a thicket of undergrowth, bramble and hazel twined with honeysuckle, and fly-ridden ferns belly high. The canter slowed, became a trot, a walk, a thrusting progress, then stopped as Mordred sharply drew rein.

From here, hidden from sight in the deep shadow of the trees, he could see the level heath that stretched between the woodland and the sea, and, dividing it, the white line of the roadway. On this lay Lamorak, dead. Not far off his horse stood with heaving sides and drooping head. Beside the body, their arms flung round one another, laughing and pounding each other's shoulders, were Agravain and Gaheris. Their horses grazed nearby unheeded.

At that moment, in a lull of the wind, came the sound of horses. The brothers stiffened, loosed one another, ran for their own beasts and mounted hastily. For a moment Mordred thought they might ride for cover into the wood where he stood watching, but already it was too late.

Four horsemen appeared, approaching at a gallop from the north. The leader was a big man, armed, on a splendid horse. Straining his eyes in the twilight, Mordred recognized the leader's device: It was Drustan himself, come riding with a couple of troopers to meet the expected guest.

And beside him, of all men in the world, rode Gareth, youngest of Lot's sons.

Drustan had seen the body. With a ringing shout, he whipped his sword out and rode down upon the killers.

The two brothers whirled to face him, dressing themselves to fight, but Drustan, appearing suddenly to recognize the two assassins, dragged his horse to a halt and put up his sword. Mordred stayed still in shadow, waiting. The matter was out of his hands. He had failed, and if he rode forward now, nothing he could say would persuade the newcomers that he had had no part in Lamorak's murder, nor any knowledge of it. Arthur would know the truth, but Arthur and his justice were a long way away.

It seemed, though, that Arthur's justice ran even here.

Drustan, spurring forward with his troopers at his back, was questioning the brothers. Gareth had jumped from his horse and was kneeling in the dust beside Lamorak's body. Then he ran back to the group of horse men, and grabbed Gaheris's rein, gesticulating wildly, trying to talk to him.

The brothers were shouting. Words and phrases could be heard above the intermittent rushing of the wind in the branches. Gaheris had shaken Gareth off, and he and Agravain were apparently challenging Drustan to fight. And Drustan was refusing. His voice rang out in snatches, clear and hard and high.

"I shall not fight you. You know the King's orders. Now I shall take this body to the castle yonder and give it burial.… Be assured that the next royal courier will take this news to Camelot.… As for you…"

"Coward! Afraid to fight us!" The yells of rage came back on the wind. "We are not afraid of the High King! He is our kinsman!"

"And shame it is that you come of such blood!" said Drustan, roundly. "Young though you are, you are already murderers, and destroyers of good men. This man that you have killed was a better knight than you could ever be. If I had been here—"

"Then you would have gone the same way!" shouted Gaheris. "Even with your men here to protect you—"

"Even without them, it would have taken more than you two younglings," said Drustan with contempt. He sheathed his sword and turned his back on the brothers. He signalled to the men-at-arms, who took up Lamorak's body, and started back with it the way they had come. Then, hanging on the rein, Drustan spoke to Gareth, who, mounted once more, was hesitating, looking from Drustan to his brothers and back again. Even at that distance it could be seen that his body was rigid with distress. Drustan, nodding to him, and without another glance at Gaheris and Agravain, swung round to follow his men-at-arms.

Mordred turned his horse softly back into the wood. It was over. Agravain, seemingly sober now, had caught at his brother's arm and was holding him, apparently reasoning with him. The shadows were lengthening across the roadway. The men-at-arms were out of sight. Gareth was on Gaheris's other side, talking across him to Agravain.

Then, suddenly, Gaheris flung off his brother's hand, and spurred his horse. He galloped up the road after Drustan's retreating back. His over-ready sword gleamed in his hand. Agravain, after a second's hesitation, spurred after him, his sword, too, whipping from its sheath.

Gareth snatched for Agravain's bridle, and missed. He yelled a warning, high and clear: "My lord, watch! My lord Drustan, your back!"

Before the words were done Drustan had wheeled his horse. He met the two of them together. Agravain struck first. The older knight smashed the blow to one side and cut him across the head. The sword's edge sliced deep into metal and leather, and bit into the neck between shoulder and throat. Agravain fell, blood spurting. Gaheris yelled and drove his horse in, his sword hacking down as Drustan stooped from the saddle to withdraw his blade. But Drustan's horse reared back. Its armed hoofs caught Gaheris's mount on the chest. It squealed and swerved, and the blow missed. Drustan drove his own horse in, striking straight at Gaheris's shield, and sent him, off-balance as he was, crashing to the ground, where he lay still.

Gareth was there at the gallop. Drustan, swinging to face him, saw that his sword was still in its sheath, and put his own weapon up.

Here the men-at-arms, having left their burden, came hastening back. At their master's orders, they roughly bound Agravain's wound, helped Gaheris, giddy but unharmed, to his feet, then caught the brothers' horses for them. Drustan, coldly formal, offered the hospitality of the castle "until your brother shall be healed of his hurt," but Gaheris, as ungracious as he had been treacherous, merely cursed and turned away. Drustan signed to the troopers, who closed in. Gaheris, shouting again about "my kinsman the High King," tried to resist, but was overpowered. The invitation had become an arrest. At length the troopers rode off at walking pace, with Gaheris between them, his brother's unconscious body propped against him.

Gareth watched them go, making no move to follow. He had not stirred a hand to help Gaheris.

"Gareth?" said Drustan. His sword was clean and sheathed. "Gareth, what choice have I?"

"None," said Gareth. He shook the reins and brought his horse round alongside Drustan's. They rode together towards Caer Mord.

The roadway was empty in the growing dusk. A thin moon rose over the sea. Mordred, emerging at last from the shadow, rode south.

That night he slept in the woods. It was chilly, but wrapped in his cloak he was warm enough, and for supper there was something left of the bread and meat the girl had given him. His horse, tethered on a long rein, grazed in the glade. Next day, early, he rode on, this time to the south-west. Arthur would be on his way to Caerleon, and he would meet him there. There was no haste. Drustan would already have sent a courier with the news of Lamorak's murder. Since Mordred had not appeared on the scene the King would no doubt assume the truth, that the brothers by some trick had managed to evade him. His assignment had not been Lamorak's safety; that was Lamorak's own concern, and he had paid for the risk he had taken; Mordred's task had been to find Gaheris and take him south. Now, once the twins' hurts were healed, Drustan would see to that. Mordred could still stay out of the affair, and this he was sure the King would approve. Even if the brothers did not survive the King's anger, the other troublemakers among the Young Celts, assuming Mordred to be ambitious for whatever power he could grasp for himself, might turn to him and invite him to join their counsels. This, he suspected, the King would soon ask him to do. And if you do, murmured that other, ice-cold voice in his brain, and the campaign goes on that is to unseat Bedwyr and destroy him, who better to take his place in the King's confidence, and the Queen's love, than you, the King's own son?

It was a golden October, with chill nights and bright, crisp days. The mornings glittered with a dusting of bright frost, and in the evenings the sky was full of the sound of rooks going home. He took his time, sparing his horse, and, where he could, lodging in small, simple places and avoiding the towns. The loneliness, the falling melancholy of autumn, suited his mood. He went by smooth hills and grassy valleys, through golden woods and by steep rocky passes where, on the heights, the trees were already bare. His good bay horse was all the company he needed. Though the nights were cold, and grew colder, he always found shelter of a sort—a sheep-cote, a cave, even a wooded bank—and there was no rain. He would tether the bay to graze, eat the rations he carried, and roll himself in his cloak for the night, to wake in the grey, frost-glittering morning, wash in an icy stream, and ride on again.

Gradually the simplicity, the silence, the very hardships of the ride soothed him; he was Medraut the fisher-boy again, and life was simple and clean.

So he came at last to the Welsh hills, and Viroconium where the four roads meet. And there, at the crossways, like another welcome from home, was a standing stone with its altar at its foot.

He slept that night in a thicket of hazel and holly by the crossroads, in the lee of a fallen trunk. The night was warmer, with stars out. He slept, and dreamed that he was in the boat with Brude, netting mackerel for Sula to split and dry for winter. The nets came in laden with leaping silver, and across the hush of the waves he could hear Sula singing.

He woke to thick mist. The air was warmer; the sudden change in temperature overnight had brought the fog. He shook the crowded droplets from his cloak, ate his breakfast, then on a sudden impulse took the remains of the food and laid it on the altar at the foot of the standing stone.

Then, moved by another impulse which he would not begin to recognize, he took a silver piece from his wallet and laid it beside the food. Only then did he realize that, as in his dream, someone was singing.

It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, and the song was one that Sula had sung. His flesh crept. He thought of magic, and waking dreams. Then out of the mist, no more than twelve paces away, came a man leading a mule with a girl mounted sideways on its back. He took them at first for a peasant with his wife going out to work, and then saw that the man was dressed in a priest's robe, and the girl as simply, sackcloth and wimple, and the pretty feet dangling against the mule's ribs were bare. They were Christians, it appeared; a wooden cross hung from the man's waist, and a smaller one lay on the girl's bosom. There was a silver bell on the mule's collar, which rang as it moved.

The priest checked in his stride when he saw the armed man with the big horse, then, as Mordred gave him a greeting, smiled and came forward.

"Maridunum?" he repeated, in response to Mordred's query. He pointed to the road that led due west. "That way is best. It is rough, but passable everywhere, and it is shorter than the main road south by Caerleon. Have you come far, sir?"

Mordred answered him civilly, giving him what news he could. The man did not speak with a peasant's accent. He might have been someone gently bred, a courtier, even. The girl, Mordred saw now, was beautiful. Even the bare feet, dangling by the mule's ribs, were clean and white, fine-boned and veined with blue. She sat silently watching him, and listening, in no way discomposed by his look. Mordred caught the priest's glance at the altar stone where the silver coin gleamed beside the food. "Do you know whose altar this is? Or whose stone at the crossways?"

The man smiled. "Not mine, sir. That is all I know. That is your offering?"

"Yes."

"Then God knows who will receive it," said the man, gently, "but if you have need of blessing, sir, then my God can, through me, give it to you. Unless," he added, on a troubled afterthought, "there is blood on your hands?"

"No," said Mordred. "But there is a curse that says I shall have. How do I lift that?"

"A curse? Who laid it?"

"A witch," said Mordred, shortly, "but she is dead."

"Then the curse may well have died with her."

"But before her, a fate was spoken of, and by Merlin."

"What fate?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"Then ask him."

"Ah," said Mordred. "Then it is true he is still there?"

"They say so. He is there in his cave on the hill, for those who have the need or the fortune to find him. Well then, sir, I cannot help you, other than give you my Christian blessing, and send you on your way."

He raised a hand, and Mordred bowed his head, then thanked him, hesitated over a coin, decided against it, and rode on. He took the west road to Maridunum. Soon the mule's bell died out in the distance, and he was alone again.

He came to the hill called Bryn Myrddin at dusk, and slept again by a wood. When he woke there was mist again, with the sun rising behind it. The haze was tinged with rose, and a faint glimmer showed on the grey trunks of the beech trees.

He waited patiently, eating the hard biscuit and raisins that were his breakfast ration. The world was silent, no movement but the slow eddying of the mist between the trees, and the steady cropping of the horse. There was no haste. He had ceased to feel any curiosity about the old man whom he sought, the King's enchanter of a thousand legends who had been his enemy (and since Morgause had said so, he took it without question as a lie) since the day of his conception. Nor was there any apprehension. If the curse could be lifted, then no doubt Merlin would lift it. If not, then no doubt he would explain it.

Quite suddenly, the mist was gone. A slight breeze, warm for the time of year, rustled through the wood, swept the eddies aside and dispersed them down the hillside like smoke from a bonfire. The sun, climbing the hilltop across the valley, blazed scarlet and gold into his eyes. The landscape dazzled.

He mounted, turning towards the sun. Now he saw where he was. The travelling priest's directions had been accurate and vivid enough to guide anyone even through this rolling and featureless landscape.

"By the time you reach the wood, you will have gone past the upper slopes of Bryn Myrddin. Go down to the stream, cross it, and you will find a track. Turn uphill again and ride as far as a grove of thorn trees. There is a little cliff, with a path curling up beside it. At the head of the cliff is the holy well, and by it the enchanter's cave."

He came to the thicket of whitethorn. There, beside the cliff, he dismounted and tied the horse. He trod quickly up the path and came out on level ground and into mist again, thick and still and stained red gold by the sun, standing as still as lake water over the turf. He could see nothing. He felt his way forward. The turf was level and fine. At his feet, peering, he could just discern small late daisies, frost-nipped, and shut against the damp. Somewhere to his left was the trickle of water. The holy well? He groped forward, but could not find it. He trod on a stone, which rolled away, almost bringing him to his knees. The silence, broken only by the trickle of the spring, was eerie. In spite of himself, he felt the chill prickles of sweat creep down his spine.

He stopped. He stood squarely, and shouted aloud.

"Ho, there! Is anyone there?"

An echo, ringing from the wall of mist, rebounded again and again from the invisible depths of the valley, and died into silence.

"Is anyone there? This is Mordred, Prince of Britain, to speak with Merlin his kinsman. I come in peace. I seek peace."

Again the echo. Again the silence. He moved cautiously towards the sound of water, and his groping fingers touched the stone rim of the well. He stooped towards the water. Breaths of mist furred and fumed from the smooth glass of the surface. He bent nearer. Below that glass the clear depths, darkly shining, led the eye down, away from the mist. At the bottom of the well was the gleam of silver, the offerings to the god.

From nowhere came a memory: the pool below the ancient tomb where Morgause had bidden him watch the depths for vision. There he had seen nothing but what should rightly be there. Here, on the holy hilltop, the same.

He straightened. Mordred, the realist, did not know that a burden had dropped from him. He would have said only that Merlin's magic was no doubt as harmless as Morgause's. What he had seen as a cursed fate, foreseen with grief by Merlin and twisted into evil by Morgause, dwindled in this world of clear water and lighted mist into its proper form. It was not even a curse. It was a fact, something due to happen in the future, that had been seen by an eye doomed to foresee, whatever the pain of that Seeing. It would come, yes, but only as, soon or late, all deaths came. He, Mordred, was not the instrument of a blind and brutal fate, but of whatever, whoever, made the pattern to which the world moved. Live what life brings; die what death comes. He did not see the comfort even as cold.

Nor did he, in fact, even know that he had been comforted. He reached for the cup that stood above the water, filled it and drank, and felt refreshed. He poured for the god, and as he returned the cup to its place said, in the tongue of his childhood, "Thank you," and turned to go.

The mist was thicker than ever, the silence as intense. The sun was right up now, but the light, instead of sweeping the air clear, blazed like a fire in the middle of a great cloud. The hillside was a swirl of flame and smoke, cool to the skin, clean to the nostrils, but blinding to the eye and filling the mind with confusion and wonder. The very air was crystal, was rainbow, was flowing diamond. "He is where he always was," Nimuë had said, "with all his fires and travelling glories round him." And "If he wishes it, you may find him."

He had found, and been answered. He began to feel his way back towards the head of the cliff. Behind him, invisible, the falling drops of the spring sounded for all the world like the sweet, faint notes of a harp. Above him was the swirl of light where the sun stood. Guided by these he felt his way forward until his foot found the drop to the path.

When he reached the base of the hill he turned east and rode straight and fast for Caerleon and his father.

10

BY THE TIME MORDRED REACHED Caerleon matters had begun to settle themselves. The King had been very angry over Lamorak's murder, and it was certainly to Agravain's advantage that his wound would keep him, and Gaheris with him, in the north until it was healed. Drustan duly sent an account of the incident to Arthur, but its bearer was not a royal courier, it was Gareth; and Gareth, though far from trying to excuse his brothers, pleaded successfully with the King for their pardon. For Gaheris he pleaded madness; Gaheris, who had loved Morgause and had killed her. Gareth, out of his own grief, could make a guess at what had passed in his brother's bruised mind as he knelt there in his mother's blood. And Agravain, as ever, had acted as the shield and dagger alongside his twin's sword. Now that Lamorak was dead, urged Gareth, it was surely possible that Gaheris could put the bloody past behind him, and take his place again as a loyal man. And Drustan, though sorely provoked, had held his hand, so it might well be that now the swinging pendulum of revenge could be stilled.

Unexpectedly enough, the main opposition to Gareth's pleading came from Bedwyr. Bedwyr, deploring the blood tie that linked Arthur to the Orkney brothers, disliked and distrusted them, and lost no chance to set the King on guard against them. He was known throughout the court to be using all his considerable influence to prevent the twins from being recalled. And where, Bedwyr insisted, with growing suspicion, was Mordred? Had he, too, perhaps, assisted in the murder, and fled before Drustan and Gareth came on the scene? Mordred himself arrived in Caerleon in time to save confusion about his part in the affair, and eventually, in spite of Bedwyr, Gareth was sent north again, to bring his brothers back to court when they were both, in mind and body, whole once more.

Gawain came back, briefly, soon after the court returned to Camelot, while Agravain and Gaheris were still in the north. He had a long interview with Arthur, and after it another with Mordred, who told him what he had seen of Lamorak's murder and its aftermath, and finished by urging Gawain to listen to the King's pleas and show the same restraint as Drustan, and to refrain from adding another stone to the bloody cairn of revenge.

"Lamorak leaves a young brother, Drian, who rides with Drustan's men. By the kind of logic that you use, he has the right now to kill either of your brothers, or you yourself. Even Gareth," said Mordred, "though I doubt if that is likely. Drustan will have seen to it that Drian knows what happened, and that — the Goddess be thanked! — Gareth kept his head and acted like a sensible man. He could see — as indeed any man could who was there — that Gaheris was crazed in his wits. If we make much of that circumstance, it is possible that when he comes back healed, no one will attempt to strike at him." He added, meaningly: "I believe that neither of the twins will ever be trusted again by the King, but if you can bring yourself to forgive Gaheris for our mother's murder, or at any rate not to take action against him, then you may, with Gareth and myself, stay within the edges of the King's favour. There may yet be a noble future for you and for me. Do you ever want to rule your northern kingdom, Gawain?"

Mordred knew his man. Gawain was anxious that nothing should interfere with his title to the Orkneys, or eventually to the kingdom of Lothian. Neither title would be worth anything without Arthur's continued support. So the matter was settled, but when the time came for the twins' return, the King saw to it that their elder brother was away from Camelot. Queen Morgan, at Castell Aur in Wales, provided him with just the excuse he needed. Gawain was dispatched there, ostensibly to investigate complaints from the peasants about abuses of authority by Morgan's guardians, and carefully kept there out of the way until the dust on the Lamorak murder should settle.

It was apparent, though, to Mordred, that Bedwyr's doubts about him were not quite resolved. In place of the guarded friendliness that Arthur's chief marshal had lately shown, Mordred was to observe a return to the wary watchfulness that Bedwyr also accorded Agravain and certain other of the Young Celts.

The phrase "Young Celts," used lightly enough at first to denote the young outlanders who tended to stick together, had by this time taken on the ring of a sobriquet, a title as clearly defined as that of the High King's companion knights. And here and there the two lines crossed; Agravain was in both, and Gaheris, and so, eventually, was Mordred. Arthur, as Mordred had anticipated, sent for him and asked him, once his half-brothers were back at court, to keep watch on them, and on the others of the Young Celts' party. A little to Mordred's surprise he found that, though there was still discontent with some of Arthur's home policies, there was no talk that could be called seditious. Loyalty to Arthur's name and fame still held them; he was duke of battles still, and enough of glory and authority hung about him to keep them loyal. His talk of wars to come, moreover, bound them to him. But there was enmity for Bedwyr. The men from Orkney who had come south to join Lot's sons in Arthur's train, and others from Lothian who hoped for Gawain's succession there (and who had some small grievances, real or imagined, against the Northumbrian lord of Benoic), knew that Bedwyr distrusted them, and that he had done his best to block the return of Agravain and Gaheris to court; had advocated, rather, their banishment back to their island home. So when, as was inevitable among the young men, the talk turned to the gossip about Bedwyr and the Queen, Mordred soon realized that this was prompted mainly by hatred of Bedwyr, and the desire to shut him out of the King's favour. When Mordred, moving carefully, let it be known that he might be persuaded to take their part, the Young Celts assumed his motive to be the natural jealousy of a King's son who might, if Bedwyr could be discredited, become his father's deputy. As such, Mordred would be a notable acquisition to the party.

So he was accepted, and in time regarded as one of the party's leaders, even by Agravain and Gaheris.

Mordred had his own rooms within the royal palace at Camelot, but he had also, for the last year or so, owned a pleasant little house in the town. A girl of the town kept house for him, and made him welcome whenever he could spare the time for her. Here, from time to time, came the Young Celts, ostensibly to supper, or for a day's fowling in the marshes, but in reality to talk, and for Mordred to listen.

The purchase of the house had in fact been the King's suggestion. If Mordred was to share the party's activities, this was not likely to happen in his rooms within the royal palace. In the easier atmosphere of his leman's house Mordred could more readily keep in touch with the currents of thought that moved the younger men.

To his house one evening came Agravain, with Colles, and Mador, and others of the Young Celts. After supper, when the woman had placed the wine near them and then withdrawn, Agravain brought the talk abruptly round to the subject that, of late, had obsessed him.

"Bedwyr! No man in the kingdom can get anywhere, become anybody, without that man's approval! The King's besotted. Boyhood friends, indeed! Boyhood lovers, more like! And still he has to listen whenever my lord high and mighty Bedwyr chooses to speak! What d'ye say, Colles? We know, eh? Eh?"

Agravain, as was usual these days, was three parts drunken, early as it was in the night. This was plain speaking, even for him. Colles, usually a hopeful sycophant, tried an uneasy withdrawal. "Well, but everyone knows they fought together since years back. Brothers-in-arms, and all that. It's only natural—"

"Too natural by half." Agravain gave a hiccup of laughter. "Brothers-in-arms, how right you are! In the Queen's arms, too… , Haven't you heard the latest? Last time the King was from court, there was my lord Bedwyr, snugged down right and tight in the Queen's bed before Arthur's horse was well out of the King's Gate."

"Where did you get that?" This, sharply, from Mador.

And from Colles, beginning to look scared: "You told me. But it's only talk, and it can't be true. For one thing the King's not that kind of a fool, and if he trusts Bedwyr—and trusts her, come to that—"

"Not a fool? It's a fool's part to trust. Mordred would agree. Wouldn't you, brother?"

Mordred, with his back to the company, pouring wine, was heard to assent, shortly.

"If it were true," began someone, longingly, but Mador cut across him.

"You're a fool yourself to talk like that without proof. It can't be true. Even if they wanted to, how would they dare? The Queen's ladies are always there with her, and even at night—"

Agravain gave a shout of laughter, and Gaheris, lounging back beside him, said, grinning: "My poor innocent. You're beginning to sound like my saintly brother Gareth. Don't you ever listen to the dirt? Agravain's been laying one of Guinevere's maids for nigh on a month now. If anyone hears the gossip, he should."

"And you mean that she says he's been in there at night? Bedwyr?"

Agravain nodded into his wine, and Gaheris gave a crow of triumph. "Then we've got him!"

But Colles insisted: "She saw him? Herself?"

"No." Agravain looked round defiantly. "But we all know the talk that's been going round for long enough, and we also know that there's no fire without smoke. Let us look past the smoke, and put out the fire. If I do get proof, will you all act with me?"

"Act? How?"

"Do the King a service, and get rid of Bedwyr, from the King's bed and the King's counsels!"

Calum said doubtfully: "You mean just tell the King?"

"How else? He'll be furious, who wouldn't, but afterwards he's got to be grateful. Any man would want to know—"

"But the Queen?" This was a young man called Cian, who came from the Queen's own country of North Wales. "He'll kill her. Any man, finding out…" He flushed, and fell silent. It was to be noticed that he avoided looking at Gaheris.

Agravain was confident and scornful. "He would never hurt the Queen. Have you never heard what happened when Melwas of the Summer Country took her and held her for a day and a night in his lodge on one of the Lake islands? You can't tell me that that lecher never had his way with her, but the King took her back without a word, and gave her his promise that, for that or even for her barrenness, he would never put her aside. No, he'd never harm her. Mordred, you know him better than most, and you're with the Queen half your time as well. What do you say?"

"About the King's tenderness towards her, I agree." Mordred set the wine jug down again, and leaned back against the table's edge, surveying them. "But all this is moonshine, surely? There is talk, I've heard it, but it seems to me that it comes mostly from here, and without proof. Without any kind of proof. Until proof is found, the talk must remain only talk, concocted from wishes and ambitions, not from facts."

"He's right, you know," said one Melion, who was Cian's brother. "It is only talk, the sort that always happens when a lady is as lovely as the Queen, and her man's away from her bed as often and for as long as the King has to be."

"It's bedroom door gossip," Cian put in. "Do you ask us to kneel down in the dirt and peer through chamber keyholes?"

Since this was in fact exactly what Agravain had been doing, he denied it with great indignation. He was not too drunk to ignore the hardening of the meeting against any idea of harming the Queen. He said virtuously: "You've got me wrong, gentlemen. Nothing would persuade me to injure that lovely lady. But if we could contrive a way to bring Bedwyr down without hurt to her—"

"You mean swear that he forced his way in? Raped her?"

"Why not? It might be possible. My wench would say anything we paid her for, and—"

"What about Gareth's?" asked someone. It was known that Gareth was courting Linet, one of the Queen's ladies, a gentle girl and as incorruptible as Gareth himself.

"All right, all right!" Agravain, a dark flush in his face, swung round to Mordred. "There's plenty to be thought about, but by the dark Goddess herself, we've made a start, and we know who's with us and who isn't! Mordred, what about it? If we can think of some way that doesn't implicate the Queen, then you're with us? You, of all men, can hardly stand Bedwyr's friend."

"I?" Mordred gave that cool little smile that was all that remained in him of Morgause. "Friend to Bedwyr, chief marshal, best of the knights, the King's right hand in battle and the council chamber? Regent in Arthur's absence, with all Arthur's power?" He paused. "Bring Bedwyr down? What should I say, gentlemen? That I reject the notion utterly?" There was laughter and the drumming of cups on the table, and shouts of "Mordred for regent!" "Well, why not? Who else?" "Valerius? No, too old." "Well, Drustan then? Or Gawain?" And then in a kind of ragged unanimity: "Mordred for regent! Who else? One of us! Mordred!"

Then the woman came in, and the shouting died, and the talk veered away to the harmless subject of tomorrow's hunt.

When they had gone, and the girl was clearing away the debris of scattered food and spilled wine, Mordred went out into the air.

In spite of himself, the talk and the final accolade had shaken him. Bedwyr gone? Himself the undisputed right hand of the King, and, in the King's absence, unquestioned regent? Once he were there, and once proved as fighter and administrator, what was more likely than that Arthur would also make him his heir? He was still not that: The King's heir was still Constantine of Cornwall, son of that Duke Cador whom Arthur, in default of a legitimate prince, had declared heir to the kingdoms. But that was before he knew that a son of his body would be—was already—begotten. Legitimate? What did that matter, when Arthur himself had been begotten in adultery?

Behind him the girl called him softly. He looked round. She was leaning from the bedchamber window, the warm lamplight falling on the long golden hair and on one bared shoulder and breast. He smiled and said, "Presently," but he hardly saw her. In his mind's eye, against the darkness, he saw only the Queen.

Guinevere. The lady of the golden hair, still lovely, of the great grey-blue eyes, of the pretty voice and the ready smile, and with it all the gentle wit and gaiety that lighted her presence-chamber with pleasure. Guinevere, who so patently loved her lord, but who understood fear and loneliness and who, out of that knowledge, had befriended an insecure and lonely boy, had helped to lift him out of the murk of his childhood memories, and shown him how to love with a light heart. Whose hands, touching his in friendship, had blown to blaze a flame that Morgause's corrupt mouth could not even kindle.

He loved her. Not in the same way, in the same breath even, as he had loved other women. There had been many in his life, from the girl in the islands whom at fourteen he had bedded in a hollow of the heather, to the woman who waited for him now. But his thoughts of Guinevere were not even in this context. He only knew that he loved her, and if the tale were true, then by Hecate, he would like to see Bedwyr brought down! The King would not harm her, he was sure of that, but he might, he just might, for his honour's sake, put her aside.…

He went no further. It is doubtful if he even knew he had gone as far. Oddly for Mordred, the cool thinker, the thoughts were hardly formulated. He was conscious only of anger at the vile whispers, the stain on the Queen's name, and of his own renewed distrust of the twins and their irresponsible friends. He recognized, with misgiving, where his duty lay as King's watcher (king's spy, he told himself sourly) among the Young Celts. He would have to warn Arthur of the danger to Bedwyr and the Queen. The King would soon get to the truth of the matter, and if action had to be taken, he was the one who must take it. Duty lay that way, and the King's trust.

And Bedwyr, if it were proved that he had forfeited that trust?

Mordred thrust the thought aside, and on an impulse that, even if he recognized it, he would not admit, he went back into the house and took his pleasure with a violence that was as foreign to him as his mental turmoil had been, and that was to cost him a gold necklace in appeasement next day.

11

LATER THAT NIGHT, WHEN town and palace were quiet, he went to see the King.

Arthur, as was his wont these days, was working late in his business room. His white hound Cabal lay at his feet. It was the same puppy that he had chosen on the day Mordred was first brought to him. It was old now, and scarred with the mementoes of some memorable hunts. It lifted its head as Mordred was shown in, and its tail beat the floor.

The servant withdrew, and the King nodded his secretary out of the room.

"How is it with you, Mordred? I am glad you came. I was planning to send for you in the morning, but tonight is even better. You know I have to go to Brittany soon?"

"It has been rumoured. So it's true?"

"Yes. It's time I had a meeting with my cousin King Hoel. I'd also like to see for myself how things are shaping over there."

"When do you leave, sir?"

"In a week's time. The weather should be fair then."

Mordred glanced at the window curtains, where a fitful wind plucked at them. "Your prophets tell you so?"

The King laughed. "I go to surer sources than the altars, or even Nimuë at Applegarth. I ask the shepherds on the high downs. They are never wrong. But I forgot, my fisher-boy. Perhaps I should have asked you, too?"

Mordred shook his head, smiling. "I might have ventured a prophecy in the islands, though even the old men there were often out of reckoning; but here, no. It's a different world. A different sky."

"You don't hanker for the other now?"

"No. I have all I want." He added: "I would like to see Brittany."

"Then I am sorry. What I wanted to tell you is that I plan to leave you here in Camelot."

In spite of himself his heart gave a jump. He waited, not looking at Arthur in case the latter read his thought.

As if he had — which, with Arthur, was even possible — the King went on: "Bedwyr will be here, of course. But this time I want you to do more than observe how things go; you will be Bedwyr's deputy, as he mine."

There was a pause. Arthur saw with interest, but without understanding, that Mordred, who had lost colour, was hesitating, as if not knowing what to say. At length Mordred asked: "And my — the other Orkney princes? Do they go with you, or stay here?"

Arthur, misunderstanding him, was surprised. He had not thought that Mordred was jealous of his half-brothers. If his mission had been a military one, he might have taken Agravain and Gaheris with him, and so drawn off some of their energy and discontent, but as it was he said, quickly and definitely: "No. Gawain is in Wales, as you know, and likely to be there for some time. Gareth would not thank me for abstracting him from Camelot, with his wedding so near. The other two can hardly expect favour of me. They stay here."

Mordred was silent. The King began to talk about his forthcoming journey and the discussions he would hold with King Hoel, then about the role Mordred would assume at home as deputy to the regent. The hound woke once, and scratched for fleas. The fire dwindled, and Mordred, obedient to a nod from his father, fed it with a log from the basket. At length the King had done. He looked at the younger man.

"You are very silent. Come, Mordred, there will be another time. Or even a time when Bedwyr will be the one to go with me, and you the one to remain as temporary king. Does the prospect dismay you so much?"

"No. No. It is — I am honoured."

"Then what is it?"

"If I ask that Bedwyr should go with you this time and leave me here, you will think that I outrun even the ambition of a prince. But I do ask it, my lord King."

Arthur stared at him. "What is this?"

"I came tonight to report to you what is being said among the Young Celts. They met at my house this evening. Most of the talk tonight was of Bedwyr. He has enemies, bitter enemies, who will plot to bring him down." He hesitated. He had known this would be hard, but he had not known how hard. "Sir, I beg you not to leave Bedwyr here while you go abroad. This is not because I myself covet the regency. It is because there is talk about him and—" He stopped. He licked his lips. He said lamely: "He has enemies. There is talk."

Arthur's eyes were black ice. He stood. Mordred got to his feet. To his fury he found that he was trembling. He was not to know that every man who hitherto had met that hard cold stare was dead.

The King said, in a flat voice that seemed to come from a great distance:

"There is always talk. There are those who talk, and there are those who listen. Neither are men of mine. No, Mordred, I understand you very well. I am not deaf; and neither am I blind. There is nothing in this talk. There is nothing to be said."

Mordred swallowed. "I said nothing, my lord."

"And I heard nothing. Go now."

He nodded a dismissal curter than the one the servant had had. Mordred bowed and went.

He had a hand on the door when the King's voice halted him.

"Mordred."

He turned. "My lord."

"This changes nothing. You remain with the regent as his deputy."

"My lord."

The King said, in a different voice: "I should have remembered that it was I who asked you to listen, and that I have no right to blame you for doing so, or for reporting to me. As for Bedwyr, he is aware of his enemies' ambitions." He looked down, resting his finger-tips on the table in front of him. There was a pause. Mordred waited. Without looking up, the King added: "Mordred. There are some matters better not spoken of; better not even known. Do you understand me?"

"I think so," said Mordred. And indeed, misjudging Arthur as the King had misjudged him, he thought so. It was apparent that Arthur knew what was being said about Bedwyr and the Queen. He knew, and chose to ignore it. Which meant simply one thing: Whether there was any truth in it or not, Arthur wanted no action taken. He wanted to avoid the kind of upheaval that must result from an open accusation levelled at the King's deputy and the Queen. So far, Mordred was right. But not in his final conclusion, which was that of a man and not of a prince: that Arthur was indifferent to the matter, and chose to ignore it out of pride as well as policy. "I think so, sir," he said again.

Arthur looked up and smiled. The bleak look was gone, but he looked very weary. "Then stay watchful for me, my son, and serve the Queen. And know Bedwyr for your friend, and my faithful servant. And now, good night."

Soon after this the King left Camelot. Mordred found that his work as deputy regent meant a series of day-long sessions in the Round Hall listening to petitions, alternating with days watching troop exercises, and finishing each evening after the public supper in hall (when further petitions were often brought to the high table) with the stacked tablets and papers in the King's business room.

In public Bedwyr, as before, took the King's place beside the Queen, but as far as Mordred, casually watchful, could ascertain, he made no opportunities for private talk with her, and neither he nor Guinevere ever attempted to dispense with Mordred's company. When the regent spoke with the Queen, as he did each morning, Mordred was there beside him; Mordred sat on her left at supper time; Mordred walked on her left hand when she took the air in her garden with Bedwyr for company and her ladies round her.

He found Bedwyr surprisingly easy to work with. The older man went out of his way to allow his deputy some scope. Soon he was passing almost three out of five judgments across to Mordred, only stipulating that the verdicts might be privately agreed before they were given. There was very little disagreement, and as the days went by Mordred found that more and more the decisions were his. It was also noticeable that as the day of Arthur's return drew near, the work awaiting him was appreciably less than it had been after previous absences.

It was also to be noticed that, in spite of the lightened burden on him, Bedwyr grew quieter and more nervy. There were lines in his face and his eyes were shadowed. At supper, leaning to listen, a smile fixed on his lips, to the Queen's soft voice beside him, he ate little, but drank deeply. Afterwards in the business room he would sit silently for long periods staring at the fire, until Mordred, or one of the secretaries, would with some query bring him back to the matter in hand.

All this Mordred noticed, watching. For him, the nearness to Guinevere was at once a joy and a torment. If there had been a look, a touch, a gesture of understanding between her and Bedwyr, Mordred was sure he would have seen or even sensed it. But there was none, only Bedwyr's silence and the sense of strain that hung about him, and perhaps an extra gaiety in the Queen's chatter and laughter when she and her ladies graced some function of the court. In either case this could be attributed to the cares of office, and the strain imposed by Arthur's absence. In the end Mordred, mindful of the King's last interview with him, put the recollection of the Young Celts' gossip out of his mind.

Then one evening, long after supper, when the King's seal was used for the last time and the secretary returned it to its box, bade the two men good night, and took himself away, there was a tap at the door and the servant came in to announce a caller.

This was Bors, one of the older knights, a Companion who had fought with Arthur and Bedwyr through the great campaign, and had been with them at Badon Hill. He was a simple man, devoted to the King, but was known to be fretting almost as fiercely as the Young Celts for action. No courtier, he was impatient of ceremony, and longed for the simplicities and movement of the field.

He gave Bedwyr the salute of the camp, and said with his usual abruptness: "You are to go to the Queen. There's a letter she wants to show you."

There was a short, blank silence. Then Bedwyr got to his feet. "It's very late. Surely she has retired? It must be urgent."

"She said so. Or she'd not have sent me."

Mordred had risen when Bedwyr did. "A letter? It came with the courier?"

"I suppose so. Well, you know how late he was. You got the rest yourself not long ago."

This was true. The man, who had been due at sundown, had been delayed on the road by a flash flood, and had ridden in not long before. Hence the late working-hours they had been keeping.

"He mentioned no letter for the Queen," said Mordred.

Bedwyr said sharply: "Why should he? If it is the Queen's it is not our concern, except as she chooses to talk about it with me. Very well, Bors. I'll go now."

"I'll tell her you will come?"

"No need. I'll send Ulfin. You get to bed, and Mordred, too. Good night."

As he spoke he began to buckle on the belt he had cast aside when the men settled down to the evening's work. The servant brought his cloak. From the side of his eye he saw Mordred hesitating, and repeated, with some abruptness: "Good night."

There was nothing for it. Mordred followed Bors out of the room.

Bors went off down the corridor with his long outdoor stride. Mordred, hurrying to catch him up, did not hear Bedwyr's quick words to the servant:

"Go and tell the Queen I'll be with her shortly. Tell her… No doubt her ladies retired when she did. You will see to it that she is attended when I come. No matter if her waiting-women are asleep. Wake them. Do you understand?"

Ulfin had been the King's chief chamberlain for many years. He said briefly, "Yes, my lord," and went.

Mordred and Bors, walking together across the outer garden court, saw him hurrying towards the Queen's rooms.

Bors said abruptly: "I don't like it."

"But there was a letter?"

"I didn't see one. And I saw the man ride in. If it's true he carried a letter for the Queen, why does she need to talk with him now? It's near midnight. Surely it could wait till morning? I tell you, I don't like it."

Mordred shot him a glance. Was it possible that the whispers had come even to the ears of this faithful veteran? Then Bors added: "If anything has happened to the King, then surely the tidings should have gone straight to Bedwyr as well. What can they have to discuss that needs privacy and midnight?"

"What indeed?" said Mordred. Bors gave him a sharp glance, but all he said was, gruffly:

"Well, well, we'd best get to bed, and mind our business."

When they reached the hall where most of the young bachelors slept, they found some of them still awake. Gaheris was sober, but only just, Agravain was drunk as usual, and talkative. Gareth sat at tables with Colles, and a couple of others lounged over dice by the dying fire.

Bors said good night, and turned away, and Mordred, who in the King's absence lived and slept within the palace, started through the hall towards the stairway that led to his rooms. Before he reached it one of the young knights, the man from Wales called Cian, came swiftly in from the outer court, pushing past Bors in the doorway. He stood there for a moment, blinking, while his dark-puzzled eyes adjusted themselves to the light. Gaheris, guessing where he had been, called out some pleasantry, and Colles, with a coarse laugh, pointed out that his clothes were still unbraced.

He took no notice. He came with his swift stride into the middle of the hall and said, urgently:

"Bedwyr's gone to the Queen. I saw him. Straight in through the private doorway, and there's a lamp lit in her chamber window."

Agravain was on his feet. "Has he, by God!"

Gaheris, lurching, got himself upright. His hand was on his sword. "So, it was true. We all knew it! Now let us see what the King will say when he hears that his wife lies with a lover!"

"Why wait for that?" This was Mador. "Let us make sure of them both now!"

Mordred, from the foot of the stairs, raised his voice urgently above the hubbub: "She sent for him. A letter came by the courier. It could be from the King. There was something in it she had to discuss with Bedwyr. Bors brought the message. Tell them, Bors!"

"It's true," said the old man, but worry still sounded in his voice, and Mador said shrewdly: "You don't like it either, do you? You've heard the stories, too? Well, if they are having a council over the King's letter, let us join it! What objection can there be to that?"

Mordred shouted: "Stop, you fools! I tell you, I was there! This is true! Are you all mad? Think of the King! Whatever we find—"

"Aye, whatever we find," said Agravain thickly. "If it is a council, then we join it as loyal King's men—"

"And if it's a tryst for lusty lovers," put in Gaheris, "then we can serve the King in other ways."

"You'd not dare touch her!" Mordred, sharp with fear, pushed his way through the crowd and gripped Gaheris's arm.

"Her? Not this time." Gaheris, drunk, but perfectly steady, laughed through ghost-haunted eyes. "But Bedwyr, ah, if Bedwyr's where I think he is, what will the King do but thank us for this night's work?"

Bors was shouting, and being shouted down. Mordred, still holding Gaheris's arm, was talking swiftly, reasonably, trying to contain the mood of the crowd. But they had drunk too much, they were ripe for action, and they hated Bedwyr. There was no stopping them now. Still clutching Gaheris's sleeve, Mordred found himself being swept along with them — there were a dozen of them now, Bors hustled along with them, and even Gareth, white-faced, bringing up the rear — through the shadowed arcades that edged the garden court, and in through the doorway that gave on the Queen's private stair. The servant there, sleepy but alert enough, came upright from the wall with his lips parting for a challenge. Then he saw Mordred, and in the moment of hesitation that this gave him, he was silenced with a blow from the butt of Colles's dagger.

The act of violence was like the twang that looses the taut bowstring. With shouts the young men surged through the door and up the stairway to the Queen's private chambers. Colles, leading, hammered on the wood with his sword hilt, shouting:

"Open! Open! In the King's name!"

Locked in the press on the stairway, struggling to get through, Mordred heard from within the room a woman's cry of alarm. Then other voices, shrill and urgent, drowned by the renewed shouting from the stairway.

"Open this door! There's treachery! Treachery to the King!"

Then suddenly, so quickly that it was obvious it had not been locked, the door opened wide.

A girl was holding it. The room was lighted only by the night-lamps. Three or four women were there, their voluminous wraps indicating that they had been in their night robes and had been roused hastily from their beds. One of them, an elderly lady with grey hair loose about her face as if she had recently been startled from sleep, ran to the door of the inner room where the Queen slept, and turned to bar the way.

"What is this? What has happened? Colles, this unseemly — And you, Prince Agravain? If it's the lord Bedwyr that you want to see—"

"Stand aside, Mother," said someone breathlessly, and the woman was thrust to one side as Colles and Agravain, shouting, "Treachery, treachery to the King!" hurled themselves, with swords out and ready, at the Queen's door.

Through the tumult, the hammering, the women's now frightened screaming, Mordred heard Gareth's breathless voice: "Linet? Don't be afraid. Bors has gone for the guard. Stand over there, and keep back. Nothing will happen—"

Then, between one hammer-blow and the next, the Queen's door opened suddenly, and Bedwyr was standing there.

The Queen's bedchamber was well lighted, by a swinging silver lamp shaped like a dragon. To the attackers, taken by surprise, everything in the room was visible in one swift impression.

The great bed stood against the far wall. The covers were tumbled, but then the Queen had already been abed when the letter — if there had been a letter — had come. She, like her women, was wrapped from throat to feet in a warm loose robe of white wool, girdled with blue. Her slippers were of white ermine fur. The golden hair was braided with blue, and hung forward over her shoulders. She looked like a girl. She also looked very frightened. She had half risen from the cross-stool where she had been sitting, and was holding the hands of the scared waiting-woman who crouched on a tuffet at her feet.

Bedwyr, holding the door, was dressed as Mordred had seen him a short time ago, but with neither sword nor dagger. Fully dressed as he was, facing the swords at the chamber door, he was, in the parlance of the fighting man, naked. And, with the lightning action of a fighting man, he moved. As Colles, still in the van, lunged towards him with his sword, Bedwyr, sweeping the blade aside with a swirl of his heavy cloak, struck his attacker in the throat. As the man staggered back, Bedwyr wrenched the sword out of his grip, and ran him through.

"Lecher! Murderer!" yelled Agravain. His voice was still thick with drink, or passion, but his sword was steady. Mordred, shouting something, caught at him, but Agravain struck the hand aside and jumped, murderous blade shortened, straight for Bedwyr. Colles's body blocked half the doorway, and for a moment Agravain was alone, facing Bedwyr's sword. In that moment, Bedwyr, veteran of a thousand combats, struck Agravain's flashing blade almost idly aside and ran his attacker through the heart.

Even this killing did not give the attacking mob pause. Mador, hard on Agravain's heels, got half in under Bedwyr's guard before he could withdraw his blade. Gareth, his young voice cracking with distress, was shouting: "He was drunk! For God's sake—" And then, shrilly, in agonized panic: "Gaheris, no!"

For Gaheris, murderer of women, had leaped straight over Agravain's fallen body, past the whirling swords where Bedwyr fought, and was advancing, sword levelled, on the Queen.

She had not moved. The whole melee had lasted only seconds. She stood frozen, her terrified woman crouched at her knees, her eyes on the deadly flash of metal round Bedwyr. If she was aware of Gaheris and his threat she gave no sign. She did not even raise a hand to ward off the blade.

"Whore!" shouted Gaheris. and thrust at her.

His blade was struck up. Mordred was hard behind him. Gaheris turned, cursing. Mordred's sword ran up Gaheris's blade and the hilts locked. Body to body the two men swayed, fighting. Gaheris, pressed back, lurched against the Queen's stool, and sent it flying. The waiting-woman screamed, and the Queen, with a cry, moved at last, backing away towards the wall. Gaheris, swearing, lashed out with his dagger. Mordred snatched out his with his left hand and brought the hilt down as hard as he could on his half-brother's temple. Gaheris dropped like a stone. Mordred turned, gasping, to the Queen, and found himself facing Bedwyr's blade, and Bedwyr's murderous eyes.

Bedwyr, hotly engaged, had seen, through the haze of blood dripping from a shallow cut on his forehead, the sudden thrust towards the Queen, and the struggle near her chair. He started to cut his way towards her with a fury and desperation that gave him barely time for thought. Gareth, exposed by Agravain's fall, and still reiterating wildly, "He was drunk!" was cut down and died in his blood almost at the Queen's feet. Then the deadly sword, red to the hilt, engaged Mordred's, and Mordred, with no time for words or for retreat, was fighting for his life.

Dimly he was aware of fresh hubbub. One of the women, regardless of danger, had run into the room, and was on her knees by Gareth's body, wailing his name over and over again. A screaming was audible along the corridor where others had run for help. Bedwyr, as he cut and thrust, shouted out some sort of command, and Mordred knew then that the guard had been called, and was there. Gaheris heaved on the floor, trying to rise. His hand slipped in Gareth's blood. Mador had been seized by the guard and dragged away, shouting. The others, some still resisting, were one by one overpowered, and hustled away. The Queen was calling something, but through the uproar she could not be heard.

Mordred was conscious mainly of two things, Bedwyr's eyes of cold fury, and the knowledge that, even through that fury, the King's marshal was deliberately refraining from killing or maiming the King's son. A chance came, was ignored; another came and was turned; Bedwyr's sword ran in over Mordred's blade, and he took the younger man neatly through the upper part of his sword arm. As Mordred staggered back, Bedwyr, following him, struck him with his dagger's hilt, a heavy blow on the temple.

Mordred fell. He fell across Gareth's outstretched arm, and the girl's tears, as she wept for her lover, fell on his face.

There was no pain yet, only dimness, and the sense of the turmoil coming and going like the waves of the sea. The fighting was over. His head was within a foot of Guinevere's hem. He was dimly conscious of Bedwyr stepping over his body to take the Queen's hands. He heard him speak, low and urgently: "They did not come to you? Is all well?" And her shaken reply, in that soft voice filled with distress and fear: "You're hurt? Oh, my dear—" And his swift: "No. A cut only. It's over. I must leave you with your ladies. Calm yourself, madam, it is over."

Gaheris, back on his feet, but bleeding from a deep cut on the arm, was being dragged away, dazed and unresisting, by the guards. Bors was there, with a face of tragedy, speaking urgently, but the words came and went, like the surge of the sea waves, with the beat of Mordred's pulse. The pain was beginning now. One of the guards said, "Lady—" and tried to lift Linet from Gareth's body. Then the Queen was there, near, kneeling beside Mordred. He could smell her scent, feel the soft wool of the white robe. His blood smeared the wool, but she took no notice. He tried to say, "Lady," but no sound came.

In any case she was not concerned with him. Her arms were round Linet, her voice speaking comfort shot with grief. At length the girl let herself be raised and led aside, and the guards took up Gareth's body to carry it away. Just before he lost consciousness Mordred saw, beside him on the floor, a crumpled paper that had fallen from the Queen's robe as she knelt beside him.

He saw the writing, elegant and regular, the hand of an expert scribe. And at the foot of the message, a seal. He knew that seal. It was Arthur's.

The story of the letter had, after all, been the truth.

12

MORDRED, WAKING FROM THE first deep swoon, swam up into consciousness to find himself in his own house, with his mistress beside the bed, and Gaheris bending over him.

His head ached fiercely, and he was very weak. His wound had been hurriedly cleaned and bandaged, but blood still oozed, and the whole arm and side seemed to be one throb of pain. He could remember nothing of how he had come here. He did not know that, as he was carried from the Queen's bedchamber, Bedwyr had shouted to the guards to see him safe and to tend his hurts. Bedwyr, indeed, was thinking only of keeping the King's son safely until the King himself should arrive, but the guards, who had not seen the fight, assumed in the haste and chaos that Mordred had been there to help the regent, so bore him straight to his own house and the care of his mistress. Here Gaheris (having contrived, by feigning to be worse hurt than he was, to elude the guards) had fled under cover of that same chaos, with only one thought in his mind, to get out of Camelot before Arthur's arrival, and to use Mordred to that end.

For Arthur was on his way home, far sooner than he had been looked for. The fateful letter, hurriedly dispatched by a king already on the road, was to warn Guinevere of his imminent arrival, and to ask her to tell Bedwyr immediately. Word had gone round already among the guards; Gaheris had heard them talking. The courier's delay would mean that the King must be only a few short hours behind him.

So Gaheris leaned urgently over the man in the bed.

"Come, brother, before they remember you! The guards brought you here in error. They will soon know that you were with us, and then they will come back. Quickly now! We've got to go. Come with me, and I'll see you safe."

Mordred blinked up at him, vaguely. His face was drained of blood, and his eyes looked unfocused. Gaheris seized a flask of cordial and splashed some of it into a cup. "Drink this. Hurry, man. My servant's here with me. We'll manage you between us."

The cordial stung Mordred's lips. Some of the painful fog lifted, and memory came back.…

It was good of Gaheris, he thought hazily. Good of Gaheris. He had hit Gaheris, and Gaheris had fallen. Then Bedwyr had tried to kill him, Mordred, and the Queen had said no word. Not then, and apparently not since, if the guards were coming back to take him as one of the traitors.… The Queen. She wanted him to die, even though he had saved her life. And he knew why. The reason came to him, through the swimming clouds, like clear and cold logic. She knew of Merlin's prophecy, and so she wanted him to die. Bedwyr, too. So they would lie, and no one would know that he had tried to stop the traitors, had in fact saved her from Gaheris, murderer of women. When the King came, he, Mordred, Arthur's son, would be branded traitor in the sight of all men.…

"Hurry," said Gaheris, with urgency.

No guards came. After all, it was easy. With his half-brother's arm round him and his mistress at his other side he walked, no, floated out into the dark street where, tense and silent, Gaheris's servant waited with the horses. Somehow they got Mordred to the saddle, somehow held him between them, then they were out of the town and riding down the road to the King's Gate.

Here they were challenged. Gaheris, pulling back slightly, with his face muffled against the cold, said nothing. The servant, forward with Mordred, spoke impatiently.

"It's Prince Mordred. He's hurt, as you know. We've to take him to Applegarth. Make haste."

The guards knew the story, which had gone round with the dawn wind. The gates were opened, the riders were through, and free. Gaheris said exultantly: "We did it! We're out! Now let us lose this burden as soon as we may!"

Mordred remembered nothing of the ride. He had a vague recollection of falling, of being caught and pulled across onto the servant's horse, while the dreadful jolting ride went on. He felt the warmth of blood breaking through the bandages, then after what seemed an age the welcome stillness as the horses were pulled up.

Rain drove down on his face. It was cool and refreshing. The rest of his body, closely wrapped as it was, was clothed in hot water. He was floating again. Sounds came and went in beats, like the pulse of the blood that was seeping from the wound. Someone—it was Gaheris—was saying:

"This will do. Don't be afraid, man. The brothers will care for him. Yes, the horse, too. Tie it there. Now leave him."

He laid his cheek on wet stone. His whole body burned and throbbed. It was strange how, when the horses had stopped, the hoofbeats still thudded through his veins.

The servant reached across him and tugged at a rope. Somewhere in the distance a bell jangled. Before the sound had died away the horses were gone. There was no sound in the world but the rain driving steadily down on the stone step where they had left him.

Arthur, arriving almost on the heels of the courier, rode next morning into a city still buzzing like a stirred hive. His regent was sent for before the King had even taken off the dirt of the journey.

When Bedwyr was announced, Arthur was sitting behind the table in his business room, his man at his feet pulling off the scuffed and muddy riding boots. The servant, without a glance at either man, took the boots and withdrew. Ulfin had been Arthur's man throughout his whole reign. He had heard rather more gossip than the next man, and had said a good deal less about it than anyone. But even he, the silent and the trusted, went out with relief. Some things were better not said, or even known.

The same thought was in both men's minds. In Arthur's eyes might even be read the plea to his friend: Do not force me into asking questions. Let us in some way, in any way, get past this ambush and back into the open rides of trust. More than friendship, more than love, depends on this silence. My kingdom would even now seem to hang on it.

It would doubtless have surprised the Orkney princes, and some of their faction, if they could have heard his first words. But both King and regent knew that, if the first and greatest trouble could not be spoken of, the second would have to be dealt with soon: Gawain of Orkney.

The King shoved his feet into his furred slippers, swung round in the great chair, and said with furious exasperation: "By all the gods below, did you have to kill them?"

Bedwyr's gesture had the quality of despair.

"What was I to do? Colles I could not avoid killing. I was naked, and he was on me with his sword. I had to take it. I had neither time nor choice, if he was not to kill me. For Gareth I am sincerely sorry. I am to blame. I cannot think that he was there in treachery, but only because he was among the pack when the cry went up, and he may have been anxious for Linet. I confess I hardly saw him in the press. I did cross swords with Gaheris, but only for a moment. I think he took a cut—no more than a scratch—from me, but then he vanished. And after Agravain fell, all my thought was for the Queen. Gaheris had been loudest of all throughout, and he was still shouting insults at her. I remembered how he had dealt with his own mother." He hesitated. "That part was nightmare-like. The swords, the yelled insults, the pack near the Queen, and she, poor lady, struck dumb and shocked all in the few seconds it had taken from peace to bloody war. Have you seen her yet, Arthur? How does she do?"

"I am told she is well, but still shaken. She was with Linet when I sent to inquire. I shall go to her as soon as I've cleaned up. Now tell me the rest of it. What of Mordred? They tell me he was hurt, and that he has gone — fled — with Gaheris. This is something that I fail to understand. He was only with the Young Celts at my request — in fact, he came to me shortly before I left Camelot, to give me some word of warning about what they might be planning to do.… You could not have known that. It was my fault; perhaps I should have told you, but there were aspects of it…" He left it at that, and Bedwyr merely nodded: This was the debatable ground that each man could tread without a word spoken. Arthur frowned down, then raised troubled eyes to the other man's. "You cannot be blamed for turning your sword on him; how could you guess? But the Queen? He is devoted to her — we used to call it boy's love, and smile at it, and so did she — so why on earth should he have tried to harm the Queen?"

"It is not certain that he did. I'm not sure what happened there. When I crossed swords with Mordred, the affair was almost over. I had the Queen safe at my back, and by that time the guards were there. I would have disarmed him and then spoken with him, or else waited for your coming, but he is too good a fighter. I had to wound him, to get the sword from his hand."

"Well," said Arthur heavily, "he is gone. But why? And especially, why with Gaheris, unless indeed Mordred is still spying for me? You know where they will have gone, of course."

"To Gawain?"

"Exactly. And what," said Arthur, his voice warming into a kind of desperation, "are we going to do about Gawain?"

Bedwyr said, grim-mouthed: "Let me take what comes."

"And kill him? If you do not, he will kill you. You must know that. And I will not have it either way. Troublesome though he is, I need Gawain."

"I am in your hands. You'll send me away, I suppose. You can hardly send Gawain, I see that. So, when, and where?"

"As for when, not immediately." Arthur hesitated, then looked straight at the other man. "I must first of all give some public evidence of trust in you."

As if without thinking, his hand had strayed across the surface of the table. This was of veined green marble, edged with wrought gold. The King, on coming in, had flung his gloves down there, and Ulfin, in his haste to be gone, had left them. Now Arthur picked one of them up, and ran it through his fingers. It was a glove of softest calf-skin, worked as supple as velvet, its cuff embroidered with silken threads in rainbow colours, and with small river-pearls. The Queen herself had done the work, not letting her women set even one of the stitches. The pearls had come from the rivers of her native land.

Bedwyr met the King's eyes. His own, the dark poet's eyes, were profoundly unhappy. The King's were as somber, but held kindness.

"As for where, will your cousin make you welcome in your family's castle in Brittany? I should like you to be there. Go first, if you will, to King Hoel at Kerrec. I think he will be glad to know that you are so near. These are anxious times for him, and he is old, and ailing a little lately. But we'll talk about this before you go. Now I must see the Queen."

From Guinevere, to his great relief, Arthur learned the truth. Far from attacking her, Mordred had prevented Gaheris from getting to her with his sword. He had, indeed, struck Gaheris down, before himself being at tacked by Bedwyr. His subsequent flight, then, must have been through fear of being identified (as Bedwyr had apparently identified him) with the disloyal faction of Young Celts. This was puzzling enough, since Bors, as well as the Queen, could obviously swear to his loyalty, but the greater puzzle lay behind: why should he have fled with, of all men, Gaheris? To this Mordred's mistress, on being questioned, provided the first clue. Gaheris, himself bleeding and obviously distraught, had managed to convince her of her lover's danger; how easy, then, it had been for him to persuade the half-conscious and weakened prince that his only hope lay in flight. She had added her own pleas to Gaheris's urging, had helped them to the horses, and seen them go.

The gate guards finished the tale, and the truth was plain. Gaheris had taken the wounded man as his own shield and pass to freedom. Arthur, now seriously concerned for his son's health and safety, sent the royal couriers out immediately to find Mordred and bring him home. When it was reported that neither Mordred nor Gaheris had been to Gawain, the King ordered a country-wide search for his son. Gaheris they had orders to secure. He would be held until the King had spoken with Gawain, who was already on his way to Camelot.

Gareth, alone of the dead, lay in the royal chapel. After his burial Linet would take her grief back to her father's house. The affair was over, but about Camelot hung still a murmur of disaster, as if the bright gold of its towers, the vivid scarlet and green and blue of its flags, was smeared over with the grey of a coming sadness. The Queen wore mourning; it was for Gareth, and for the other deaths and spilled blood of what was noised abroad as a mistaken loyalty; but there were those who said that it was mourning for the departure of her lover into Brittany. But they whispered it more softly than before, and as often as not the rumour was hotly denied. There had been smoke, and fire, but now the fire was out, and the smoke was gone.

It was to be seen that the Queen kissed the departing marshal on both cheeks; then, after her, the King did the same. And Bedwyr, apparently unmoved after the Queen's embrace, had tears in his eyes as he turned from the King.

The court saw him off, then turned with anticipation to greet Gawain.

The doorstep where Mordred had been abandoned belonged, not to one of the King's protected foundations, but to a small community living remote from any town or road, and vowed to silence and poverty. The track that led through their little valley was used only by shepherds, or strayed travellers looking for a short cut, or, as in Gaheris's case, by fugitives. No messenger came there, no news, even, of the recent stirring scenes enacted in Arthur's capital. The good brothers nursed Mordred with dutifully Christian care, and even with some skill, for one of their number was a herbalist. They had no way of guessing who the stranger was who had been left on their doorstep during the storm. He was well dressed, but carried neither weapon nor money. Some traveller, no doubt, who had been robbed, and who owed his life to the fear — even perhaps the piety — of the thieves. So the brothers nursed the stranger, fed him from their plain rations, and were thankful when, the fever gone, he insisted on leaving their roof. His horse was there, an undistinguished beast. They packed a saddle-bag for him of black bread, wine in a leather flask, and a handful of raisins, and sent him on his way with a blessing and, it must be admitted, a private Te Deum afterwards. There had been something about the grim and silent man that had frightened them, and the brother who had watched his sleep had told them with fear of words spoken in grief and dread where the names of the High King and his Queen recurred. Nothing more could be understood: Mordred, deep in fever, had raved in the language of his childhood, where Sula and Guinevere and Queen Morgause came and went in the hot shadows, and all looks were alien, all words hurtful.

The wound was healed, but some residue of weakness remained. He rode barely eight miles on the first day, thankful for the plodding steadiness of the beast he bestrode. By instinct he went northward. That night he spent in a deserted woodcutter's hut deep in the forest; he had no money for an inn, nor had the brothers been able to spare him any. He would have to live, as they did (he thought hazily, as he huddled for warmth in his cloak and waited for sleep), on charity. Or else on work.

The thought, strange for so many years, aroused him to a sort of bitter amusement. Work? A knight's work was fighting. A weaponless man on a poor horse would be taken on only by the pettiest and poorest of rulers. And any ruler would ask questions. So, what work?

Out of the advancing clouds of sleep the answer came, with amusement still gone awry, but with something about it of an old longing. Sail. Fish. Dig peats. Grow a thin crop of grain and harvest it.

An owl sweeping low over the woodcutter's thatch gave its high, tearing cry. Half asleep, and already in vision on the edge of the northern sea, Mordred heard it as the cry of a gull, and it seemed like part of a decision already made. He would go home. He had been hidden there once before. He would hide there again. And even if they came looking for him amongst the islands, they would be hard put to it to find him. It did not occur to him to do anything but hide, so fixed in his poisoned delirium had Gaheris's lies and his own delusions become.

He turned over and slept, with cold air on his face and the cry of the gull still in his dream. Next day he turned westward. Two successive nights he spent in the open, avoiding the monastery houses where he might have heard of Arthur's search for him. The third was passed in a peasant's hut, where he shared the last of the brothers' hard bread and wine, and chopped firewood for his lodging-fee.

On the fourth day he reached the sea. He sold the horse, and with the money paid his passage northward on a small and barely seaworthy trader which was the last to leave port for the islands before winter closed the way.

Meanwhile Gawain came back to Camelot. Arthur sent Bors to meet him, to give him a full account of the tragedy, and also to temper as far as he might Gawain's grief over Gareth and Agravain and his anger with their killer. Bors did his best, but all his talk, his assertion of the Queen's innocence, his tale of Agravain's drunkenness and habitual (in these days) violence, of Gaheris's murderous intentions, of the attack on the unarmed Bedwyr, and the half-lit chaos of the fighting in the Queen's bedchamber… say what he might, nothing moved Gawain. Gareth's undeserved death was all he spoke of, and, Bors began to think, all he slept, ate and dreamed with.

"I'll meet him, and when I do, I shall kill him" was all he would say. "He's been sent away from court. The King has banished him. Not for anything that stains the Queen, but—"

"To keep him out of my reach. Yes. Well," said Gawain stonily, "I can wait."

"If you do kill Bedwyr," said Bors, desperately, "be sure Arthur will kill you."

The hot, blood-veined Orkney eyes turned to him. "So?" Then the eyes turned away. Gawain's head went up. They were just in sight of the golden towers, and the sound of a bell tolling slowly came floating, echoing from the water that edged the roadway. They would be there for Gareth's burial.

Bors saw the tears on Gawain's cheeks, and, drawing his horse back, said no more.

What passed between Gawain and his uncle the High King no one else ever knew. They were closeted together in the King's private rooms for the best part of a day, from the moment the funeral was over, right into the night and towards the next morning. Afterwards, without a word to any man, Gawain went to his rooms and slept for sixteen hours, then rose, armed himself, and rode to the practice field. That evening he ate at a tavern in the city, and stayed through the night with a girl there, reappearing next day in the field.

For eight days and nights he did this, talking with no one except as business required. On the ninth day he left Camelot, escorted, and rode the few miles to Ynys Witrin, where the King's ship, the latest Sea Dragon, lay.

She set her golden sail, raised her crimson dragon to the autumn winds, and weighed anchor promptly for the north.

It was Arthur's bid for two things: to get a trouble-maker as far out of the way as possible, and into the cooling winds of distance and time; and to give Gawain's hurt and angry spirit some work to do.

He had done the obvious thing, the one thing Mordred had not even thought of. Gawain, King of the Orkneys, had gone back to take up the rule of his islands.